Light & Wonder Inc (LNW) 2016 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Q2 2016 Scientific Games Corporation earnings conference call.

(Operator Instructions)

As a reminder, this call may be recorded.

I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference, Mr. Bill Pfund, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Catherine.

Good morning, everyone.

During today's call, we will discuss our 2016 second-quarter results and operating performance, followed by a question-and-answer period.

With me this morning are: Gavin Isaacs, Vice Chairman; Mike Quartieri, Executive Vice President and CFO; and CEO and President, Kevin Sheehan.

Our call today will contain statements that constitute forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995.

These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those being discussed.

For certain information regarding these risks and uncertainties, please refer to our earnings press release issued earlier today, the materials relating to this call posted on our website and the filings with the SEC, including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed on February 29, 2016, and our subsequent reports filed with the SEC.

We will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures.

A description of each non-GAAP financial measure and a reconciliation of each non-GAAP financial measure to the most comparable GAAP financial measure can be found in our earnings press release.

As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded, and a replay of this webcast and the accompanying materials will be archived in the Investors Section at ScientificGames.com.

Now let me turn the call over to Gavin.

Thanks, Bill, good morning, everyone.

On behalf of the entire Scientific Games team across the globe, we are pleased to report that with our second-quarter performance, we have now generated three consecutive quarters of year-over-year growth in revenue, operating profit, AEBITDA, and free cash flow.

I can't be more emphatic on these points.

We are building momentum from a position of real strength today, executing on business strategies, delivering improved results, and paying down our debt.

Let me share a few of our financial operational milestones.

Second-quarter 2016 revenue rose 5% to $729 million.

Operating income increased $59 million, and our AEBITDA rose to $280 million.

Cash flow from operations more than doubled to $91 million, and free cash flow increased $27 million over the prior-year quarter, and we continue to delever during the quarter by reducing the principal face of our debt by $80 million, largely through the repurchase of $66 million of our subordinated notes at a discount.

Our improving performance demonstrates the ongoing success of our business, the strong positioning for the future, and the value that comes from our diverse revenue streams.

Turning to our segment performance, interactive was again our fastest-growing division and a major driver of our overall Q2 revenue growth.

Total interactive revenue was up 15% on a quarterly sequential basis and 62% year over year.

The AEBITDA contribution increased 37% year over year.

Interactive social revenue growth significantly outpaced the category growth.

Based upon Q2 reported results, Scientific Games Interactive became the second largest social slots game apps provider in North America, surpassing IGT's DoubleDown Casino for the first time.

Congratulations to Barry, Jordan, Sherm, Wilson, and all the crew, a long way from (inaudible) FX days.

Interactive is an important pillar of our strategic growth platform.

Our strategy is simple: maintain and refresh existing gaming apps through the introduction of new games; expand our geographic penetration; launch new apps that capitalize on our extensive and continually growing live real IP, such as the recent launch of the Blazing 7s Hot Shot Social Casino app; and go mobile, mobile, mobile.

Furthermore, through our SG Universe B2B platform, we are leveraging our game success and systems capabilities to keep our land-based customers connected to their players in the mobile and online environment.

Our lottery business generated exceptional results for the quarter, thanks to the hard work of Jim Kennedy and his talented lottery team.

Revenue increased $14 million and AEBITDA rose to $95 million.

This quarter's success was largely driven by the $15 million growth of our instant games business, where we hold the number one position.

Driving that leadership is the lottery team's passionate commitment to innovation and focus on customer growth.

Our cooperative services program, or CSP, is a significant factor that can drive retail sales for our customers.

Over the last several quarters, customers using our CSP analytics and capabilities have seen their retail sales grow at a rate of nearly 50% greater than those customers using a competitive offering or who do not use CSP.

That is customer performance driven by our competitive advantage.

In the gaming division, revenue totaled $442 million, a 2% decrease.

The increase in new gaming machine sales revenue was offset by lower gaming systems revenue.

Scientific Games continues to be the leader in gaming systems.

As I have said before, quarterly revenue is lumpy and dependent on the timing of installation go-lives.

Today, we have more than 460,000 gaming machines connected to our systems across the globe, and a 56% market share of the world's top-25 casinos.

Importantly, we continue to invest in the development of additional new software tools and hardware enhancements, such as the recent launch of our new iVIEW [VM4], and growing customer interest in our big data business intelligence software applications.

The strength and breadth of our hardware and gaming content portfolio drove an 11% year-over-year increase in sales revenue from gaming machines.

Sales of our high-performing Pro Series Wave platform continue to climb, setting a new Q2 quarterly shipment record.

This was achieved while generating an excellent balance of sales across our entire portfolio of differentiated cabinets and platforms.

Sales of the TwinStar cabinet grew 36% over the first quarter, while the number of Dualos units shipped in Q2 doubled over the first quarter, providing solid growth in Australia and Asia.

With the content library of games for these cabinets expanding, we maintain optimism for continued growth of these new products.

Overall, our gaming business continued to show the benefit of our successful integration process, as the AEBITDA margin improved by 110 basis points over a year-ago level.

Our focus forward remains clearly centered on innovation, fiscal discipline, and our customers.

The strength of our integrated portfolio and the diversity of our revenue streams provides tremendous balance that supports the generation of our cash flow and sustainable long-term shareholder value.

It's great to see the team pulling together and our momentum building.

We are now in our countdown to the Australian Gaming Expo, G2E, and [nesple] trade shows.

I'm very excited about the opportunity to connect with customers, investors, partners, and other stakeholders, when we will again showcase our ground-breaking innovations, and I look forward to seeing many of you at the show.

We've accomplished much in the past two years.

We are now one Company with three strong business units: gaming, lottery, and interactive.

Our integration is behind us and our business strategies are delivering solid results.

This is our third consecutive quarter of profitable growth, we are executing fiscal discipline, and we are paying down debt.

With our momentum building, I am now moving to a greater strategic role as Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors.

I'd like to introduce you to Kevin Sheehan, our new CEO and President, who brings with him decades of C Suite experience, and is charged with propelling the growth and development of Scientific Games.

He has proven success in expanding markets, focusing on the complete customer experience, supporting innovative new products and services, and importantly, delivering strong sales.

With extensive hospitality experience honed at the Norwegian Cruise Line, Kevin served as CEO for seven years and led the development and expansion of the Company, presiding over the strong sales and EBITDA growth, as well as the Company's IPO, one of the most successful IPOs in 2013.

Lastly, I will serve as an advisor to Kevin, sharing my deep insights into the gaming industry and our Company, and serving as a liaison with our key customers.

And now, please let me introduce you to Kevin, our new CEO and President.

Thank you, Gavin, and good morning, everyone.

I'd like to start by recognizing the great job that you've done in building Scientific Games into one great Company.

It is my responsibility to stay focused on our customers, engage with our 8,400 talented employees, create innovative products and services, and provide shareholder value.

I look forward to partnering with you as we continue our Company's success.

This is an exciting time to join Scientific Games.

As a worldwide leader in gaming, lottery, and interactive innovation, I look forward to building on the momentum and driving continued success across the Company.

I'm excited to leverage my extensive experience, financial acumen, and leadership to propel Scientific Games to the next level.

And now, let me turn the call over to Mike to provide his review of the second-quarter results.

Thanks, Kevin, and welcome aboard.

Good morning, everyone.

On an overall basis, both revenue and AEBITDA grew 5% over the prior-year quarter.

Although gaming segment revenue was lower by $8 million, segment AEBITDA rose slightly to $201 million, with an AEBITDA margin of 45.6%.

The improved margin reflects the cost synergies and production consolidation associated with the integration action of last year, partially offset by slightly less profitable mix of revenue.

During the quarter, gaming SG&A benefited from $7.5 million of insurance proceeds from a prior legal matter, which was also partially reflected as an adjustment in the AEBITDA reconciliation for the gaming segment.

In gaming operations, we were optimistic that the installed base of WAP, premium, and daily fee-participation units would begin to stabilize.

And in Q2, the installed base of these units decreased by only 66 units on a quarter-sequential basis.

We remain optimistic that we will show further improvement as we benefit from the launch of the innovative GameScape cabinet.

Average daily revenue was essentially flat on a sequential basis and down $3.92 per unit year over year, largely reflecting the lower proportion of WAP units in the installed base.

The installed base of other participation and leased units was essentially flat on a sequential basis and increased by 2,625 units year over year.

This year-over-year increase largely reflects additional leased international units and the double-digit growth in the installed base of electronic table systems.

Year over year, the installed base of our electronic table systems is up more than 650 units.

The average daily revenue increased $0.57 per unit on a sequential basis, with the benefit from the electronic table systems more than offsetting the impact of lower yielding international units.

Gaming systems revenue was $60 million, was essentially flat on a quarterly-sequential basis.

While maintenance revenue increased 5% year over year, total systems revenue declined due to fewer larger, multi-site installations than a year ago.

Quarterly systems revenue is quite variable, depending on the revenue recognition of larger installations.

Last year's results included significant revenue from a large multi-site operator in Australia, while there was no similar size installation this year.

I would remind everyone that with no new large multi-site installation scheduled for the remainder of 2016, we expect quarterly revenue in the back half to be consistent with the first half of the year.

I would also remind everyone that we remain the leader in gaming systems and that our long-term pipeline of projects remains solid.

This was recently substantiated in New York, where two of the first new full-scale casinos under construction have already selected our gaming systems solution.

And in Canada, we are progressing nicely with both the Alberta and Ontario projects and would expect to begin recognizing revenue on them in 2017.

Table products revenue decreased due to quarterly fluctuation in product sales which is only a partial offset by the ongoing growth in lease product.

Product sales is a small portion of our business today and can be somewhat lumpy on a quarterly basis.

Our strategic emphasis continues to be on growing the recurring revenue from an installed base.

And our installed base, again, set a new record level.

We continue to be the number one provider of proprietary table games, table progressives, shufflers, and other table products.

Turning to machine shipments, during the second quarter, we shipped 7,668 new gaming machines globally.

Of the total, 4,678 units shipped to customers in the US and Canada.

We shipped 431 Oregon VLT units, which completed that contract, while replacement units for casinos totaled 3,037 units.

While the Pro Series Wave cabinet again remained the most popular cabinet in our offering, exceptional balance was demonstrated across the breadth of our portfolio.

We shipped 740 Illinois VGT units and another 470 units for new casino openings.

Internationally, we shipped 2,990 new units, most of which were replacements.

Australia and Asia were up year over year, reflecting strong shipments in the Dualos cabinet.

Our average sale price was $16,859, and as a result of our solid ASP and strong unit shipped share, we believe Scientific Games continues to retain the leading market share on a dollar basis of gaming machine sales in the US and Canada.

Lottery revenue increased by $14 million, while operating income rose $9 million, and AEBITDA increased $13 million.

The increase in revenue, along with a more profitable mix of revenue and a $7 million increase in EBITDA from our equity investments, drove the higher AEBITDA and AEBITDA margin.

The revenue growth was primarily driven by an 11% increase in instant games, with US instant games up 17%.

The revenue growth and improved margin contribution by instant games was due in part to higher year-over-year premium licensed games activity, combined with strong retail sales performance for those customers for which we are the primary provider of instant games and for which we also provide our CSP services.

Year over year, services revenue was down about $2 million.

The impact of the China contract was partially offset by US service revenue benefiting from higher retail sales of multi-state jackpots.

Of note, the Powerball jackpot just recently rose to about $478 million before it was won.

Regarding the Arizona lottery systems contract, we are on track and expect to begin recognizing revenue next month.

Our interactive segment, as Gavin noted, had another great quarter.

As a result of the revenue growth, operating income increased $6 million and AEBITDA rose $5 million over the prior-year period.

I think it's important to understand that nearly 70% of the year-over-year increase in interactive SG&A expense is related to marketing spend and player acquisition costs that directly contribute to the revenue growth we experience.

This spend is performance-based and we have sophisticated analytics that enable us to spend our marketing dollars effectively.

Additionally, just under 25% of the year-over-year increase in aggregate SG&A and R&D expense relates to the expansion of development studios and engineering staff to support the launch of several new game apps, including the very recent soft launch of the Blazing 7s Hot Shot Mechanical Reels slot game.

Additional projects are in the work that leverage our vast array of slot IP, which is expected to provide a wide runway for future growth through this year and into 2017.

From my background on the casino-operator side, I would note that these expenses are similar in nature to the casino pre-opening and new-development project expenses that are often called out by operators.

Now turning to cash flow.

During the quarter, we repurchased $66 million of principal face value of notes at a discounted rate, resulting in a $25 million gain on extinguishment of debt and has the benefit of reducing our future cash interest costs by approximately $4 million on an annual basis.

We also made $11 million of scheduled term-loan amortization payments and $3 million of capital lease payments.

As a result of our repurchase activity, we did not make any voluntary payments on our revolving credit facility, so it remained flat at $80 million drawn at June 30, 2016.

For the first six months of 2016, we've generated $57 million of free cash flow, which is a $69 million improvement over the first six months of last year.

In aggregate, since the beginning of the year, we have reduced the total principal face value of our debt by $108 million.

Going forward, our priority continues to be on generating growth, increasing free cash flow, and continuing to delever.

As you look to the remainder of 2016, even as we expect to build momentum, I will remind everyone that historically, our third-quarter results are seasonably lower than our second quarter on a sequential basis.

In addition, having achieved great success in accelerating integration activities last year, the benefit of those cost synergies are now behind us.

And we are already reflected in the margin improvement achieved in the second half of 2015.

And now, I'd like to open up the call for questions.

Operator.

(Operator Instructions)

Steve Wieczynski, Stifel.

Hello, good morning, guys.

The first question, let me start with the management change.

It's a little bit of a strange move.

Can you give us some details around the timing, Gavin?

Why now?

I know you talked about the integration being done at this point, but it still is a little bit of a strange move in terms of timing.

Thanks, Steve.

I think it's -- why now?

I think it's because the integration and all that work's been done, and we're now moving into a new phase.

I believe it's common after the successful completion of these integrations for CEOs to move to more strategic leadership roles and to bring in a new CEO to lead to the next phase of growth and development.

That's, in essence, why now.

Okay.

Got you, and then let me move to Kevin.

Kevin, given your background, pretty diverse background of cruise lines and car rental companies, how do you think that transforms over into a gaming and lottery company?

Steve, good question.

It's actually -- it's car rental guys, it's the Cendant, it's the Spanish-language television creation, it's the Norwegian.

It's really at this point when you look at my background, this is a business.

It's another complex business and that's really what gains my interest.

So the opportunity to come in and take a fresh look.

Gavin has done a great job over the past number of years in building the business to where it is.

So having the ability to come in fresh and look at the way everything is laid out, from a revenue standpoint, are we hitting on all the opportunities from a cost standpoint, are we executing effectively?

Is it seamless?

And then making sure the culture is set in a fashion like I had -- Steve, you knew it, back at Norwegian and had everybody aligned toward our goal of driving on the same page to the outcome that I knew we would get to.

And then just over quarter after quarter of delivering those results, everyone started to understand, hey, we were going to do this and we had this great opportunity.

And then getting everybody focused on that was an important step.

It just seems like another opportunity to try to create that same winning formula.

Okay, got you.

Let me ask -- can I ask two quick questions just on the quarter in general.

In terms of the game ops, they were actually a little better than we were looking for, but the yields continued to come down.

I know you talked about higher yielding WAP games being removed.

Can you give us an idea of where you think that ultimately bottoms or is that just more a function of when your WAP placements continue to find a bottom as well?

It's a magic wand kind of question, Steve.

We have seen a bottoming out now of the removals and things like that.

I think that during the quarter, there's obviously some seasonality which -- well, not seasonality, but there were some play that was in some jurisdictions lower.

And clearly some months were weaker than others, and I think they all play.

WAPs is our purest indication of what's actually going out there on our machines.

So I don't know if I can answer the question very specifically in any way.

Okay, got you, and last question for me.

The interactive segment continues to do very well.

When we look at the average daily revenue per user it was up pretty significantly from the first quarter.

What drove that?

Were you guys doing stuff behind the scenes or it was just an uptick in spending levels from your customer base?

I think our business has just got great momentum.

We have an incredible portfolio of IP from all of the businesses that we can utilize in the social space.

And players continue to be entertained and excited by the great games that we make.

In many instances, some of our competitors have put all their good IP out there; we still have barrels and barrels of games to come.

I think that there is still great opportunity for that business to continue to grow.

Okay, great.

Thanks guys, appreciate it.

Thanks, Steve.

Chad Beynon, Macquarie.

Hi, thanks for taking my question.

Gavin, again, congratulations to you on the integration and the recent success, and Kevin, best of luck, looking forward to working together.

Wanted to start with lottery, great result in the first half of the year and in the second quarter.

You highlighted some of the initiatives, the innovation, the CSP that has resulted in these results.

Could you help us think about maybe your outlook in this segment, where capital per spend can go, consumption levels?

Maybe just some anecdotes and just help us think about some of the growth rates that we're seeing in the space.

Thanks.

We're asking all the tough questions on my last day.

That's another one of the crystal ball ones.

We continue to see improvements by virtue of our analytical pools in lottery and the CSP processes that we've got.

And we continue to see them driving above market growth for the customers who utilize them.

So again, going back to our portfolio question, we do have great games on our [instant] side.

We have the broadest portfolio of brands and games that we can utilize.

And then, again, using the CSP tools and the analytics, we can much better position and drive the results for our customers for lotteries.

So I think you're beginning to see the strength of that come through and I think last quarter and the quarter before, we showed that there's continued strength in that part of the business.

As to numbers, again, that's your job.

Excellent.

Well, your competitor is giving some medium-term outlook on the segment.

So we'll just use theirs.

Moving on to CapEx, the reduction in guidance that you announced here in the result, is this something that is a result of any one thing being pushed into 2017?

Or is this a new level of spending that you plan to incorporate in your outlook?

It's Mike here.

There really hasn't been any substantial push-outs of CapEx into the following year.

Some of the stuff that we've been looking at is just trying to be more disciplined around our, what I'll call non-revenue generating CapEx spend.

So one of the things that we're starting to wind down on right now is our Oracle implementations.

So that's a big piece of what I'll call the back-office type of CapEx.

We've gotten live on lottery now for the rest of the world so that's up and running.

Interactive will be quickly on Oracle Lite within the next six months.

And then we're already half on gaming and the other half will come on probably throughout 2017.

Really I think it's just more about better financial discipline and trying to generate free cash flow to help delever the Company.

I would just add to that: there's been nothing that we've pushed out or done anything on those bases.

It's purely been better controls and as we've got the business momentum going, we're continuously looking for improvements.

This is an area where we've been making improvements.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Joe Greff, JPMorgan.

Hello, guys.

Good morning.

This is actually Dan Politzer on for Joe.

Quick question, Gavin, this is more directed towards you.

Is the vice chairman position a full-time role?

And can you walk us through what will your day-to-day responsibilities look like?

We're just trying to figure out how -- or better understand, rather, why now and what was the impetus for this change.

Sure, Dan.

So I'll be full-time until the end of the year, and then I'll be moving more to a part-time role going forward.

I will serve as an advisor, obviously, to Kevin and continue to work with our sales teams, particularly in the gaming areas, and work with our global customers.

In fact, even Sunday I fly down to Australia for the AGE.

I'm committed to seeing that our Company continues to succeed.

I'm very proud of the work that's been done so far, and I believe that we have great opportunities going forward.

And I'm happy to be a part of that and work with Kevin and the rest of the team on that.

Okay.

Great.

And then just one follow-up, more on the interactive business.

I understand that there's increased marketing costs and R&D and whatnot associated with the revenue increases.

But how should we think about margin going forward?

Is this AEBITDA margin in the low 20% range a good way to think about it?

Is there any potential over time to expand margins?

We'd like to think so.

As you grow the business, you obviously need to invest in it and we need to do some marketing pushes.

This is -- interactive marketing is very different than marketing, say, in the land-based world or in the lottery world because you can definitely see ROIs attributable to almost every dollar you spend.

As the business continues to build momentum, I think you need to stoke the fire potentially a little bit less so there are some opportunities for greater margin improvement.

All right, that's it for me.

Thanks.

Thanks again.

James Kayler, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Changing gears a little bit, can you just give us some commentary about what you're hearing from your casino customers about their CapEx budgets, their plans for machine purchases this year, as well as what they're doing with their gaming ops footprint as we look into the back half of 2016, but importantly, into 2017 also?

I don't think the message has really changed from our casino customers; I think they still look for opportunities to improve their performance and where the appropriate products are around.

We're very excited for things like GameScape, which come out this month.

I think they're going to be the kind of products that our customers look for to try to improve performance on their floors.

But I don't think I could say that people are changing their outlook very much in relation to the way they're running their businesses.

Okay.

And just on the -- my follow-up question would be on the Canadian systems.

Can you -- you mentioned starting to recognize revenue in 2017.

Can you just maybe recap the scope of that business and what the financial impact could be in 2017 and 2018?

We'll split that up, but you've got Alberta and Ontario, two very large gaming provinces, particularly Ontario.

We have system rollouts going out across those provinces, and the way these things work is that you need a go-live letter, which is the time upon which you can recognize revenue.

And you work with your customers because we do support our customers and we try and work exactly with them.

But [throughout the timetable which is theirs].

And when they're ready to go, we have rollouts schedules with a lot of people involved in putting -- rolling out a system, software development, all of that.

When it goes live, it kicks up.

And as I said, we are anticipating both of those two major province to go live in 2017.

Mike --

And then just from a size perspective, for Alberta, the system is stretching out over 28 different casinos and is touching about 14,000 games throughout the Alberta province.

And from an Ontario perspective, it's roughly about 24 casinos that it will also touch, and that's about 20,000 machines that it will be connected to.

So, they're not cookie-cutter, out-of-the-box six-month implementations.

These things have been going on for a while.

The teams are working hard and we expect to be able to start recognizing that revenue once the go-live letters start getting signed, which will be in 2017.

Unfortunately, as we're doing the work we are getting our bills paid.

So unfortunately, there is the fact that cash doesn't always match the revenue recognition from a GAAP accounting perspective.

And we don't give the actual value, the monetary value of those deals.

Okay.

Very good.

Thank you, guys.

(Operator Instructions)

Mike Malouf, Craig Hallum.

Great thanks, guys, for taking my questions.

I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit on the interactive side.

Is there any strategic, call it unlock of value there?

Obviously doing very well and one of the bright spots, certainly, with regards to growth.

I'm just wondering if buried in the value of the Scientific Games could be quite a diamond with regards to valuation.

I'm wondering if there's any moves you can make on that front.

I think we continually, as a Board, look at that.

We discuss it every time we get together, and clearly, given all the other transactions going on in the space, it's something that we're currently looking at and we will continue to look at.

Part of our objective is to create value for our shareholders, and that's an area that we should be -- we are focusing on at the moment.

Okay.

Great.

And then with regards to buying back some of the debt, is that the strategy going forward?

Maybe this question is for Mike as far as buying it in the secondary market at a discount versus paying off some of the revolver and such.

Yes.

I think it's important just to look at how we delever the Company as quickly as possible, but also being very keen on maintaining our covenant compliance and funding the growth of the Company.

So it was a good opportunity for us to be able to make a strategic purchase in the open market, and if opportunities are like that and available, we'll always be looking at them, just as we would look at any other opportunity to spend our cash to create the greatest value and return for the Company.

Okay, and then finally, you had -- I know you had laid out, obviously, some very detailed integration savings a couple years ago, and now those are behind us.

But throughout that period, you had always said that there's always potential for further cost savings, but you would address those after you've achieved what you set out to achieve.

So I'm wondering as you stand now and those things are behind us, do you see further cost savings ahead of you?

Is there more integration now that you've gotten a lot more visibility on putting the companies together?

I think that when you operate a company and you start to continue to operate it, and you get momentum going, there are lots of opportunities where you can improve.

One of our core values is to continuously improve, and as part of that improvement, you've got to find savings.

I think now that Kevin is taking over, he'll obviously look at everything through fresh eyes and there may be additional opportunities through that.

So I feel comfortable in saying that there will be other opportunities for further improvements.

But they come when you start operating the business.

It's a natural flow on.

Great.

Thanks again.

Susan Berliner, JPMorgan.

Hello, thank you, good morning, congratulations.

Thank you.

Gavin and Kevin, I wanted to start with you, just going back to the change.

I was curious, Kevin, I'm not sure when you started.

And Gavin, I know you've been talking about cross-marketing a lot, and you've definitely been thought of as very keen to that and with your customers.

And I was wondering over the next six months, what will the priority be with regards to introducing Kevin to all of the top clients?

It will be the number-one priority.

It's a great question.

Kevin started about 7 minutes ago -- or 27 minutes ago, I should say.

So this is his first day on the job.

And one of my objectives is to make sure that we continue to delight our customers and we continue to empower them.

I will stay on as a key liaison and an advisor to Kevin, and one of the things that he and I have spoken about is making sure that he has the appropriate introductions and face time with all of our key customers.

And it's a good time for that because you have G2E coming up in six weeks.

So he's going to get to meet a hell of a lot of them there.

And then you've got [Nashville] the week after, so you're going to meet all your lottery customers there.

So it actually is a good part of year to do that, and I will be available to -- not only Kevin, but also the rest of our team, and I expect to continue to go out there and support them driving the business with our customers.

Just to jump in on a little bit of that, we've got a great leadership team here, a great sales organization.

So being able to piggyback of all of their skills and relationships will be helpful.

As well as, of course, Gavin has got deep, deep-rooted relationships with everyone.

So I'm going to take advantage of everything I can as I move forward here.

And very excited about it, by the way.

Thank you.

And I then just wanted to follow-up, and my congratulations on the debt repurchases.

But Kevin, from your perspective, having worked at other somewhat levered companies in the past, what kind of a priority do you put on continued further deleveraging at Sci Games?

It's -- that's the opportunity -- one of the big opportunities.

Obviously we have to build -- continue to build a great business, continue to build the culture, have a winning environment for all of our team members.

But the history that I have is you look at the mathematics behind the income statements and the balance sheet, and I've always worked with high leverage.

And I saw that -- when you believe in your business and when you have alignment with your team and belief in the direction that we're going, you'd rather have a little bit more leverage than not have leverage.

And we talk about paying down the revolver, which is, what, 3% or 4% versus the opportunities to do things to create value.

When I walked into Norwegian, we were 16 to 1, net debt to EBITDA, not something I would ever want to do again.

But -- and we walked right into the economic downturn.

I came in at the very end of 2007; as you know, 2008 was a terrible environment and fuel prices went skyrocketing.

So there was a load of things and we worked our way through that.

Same thing at Cendant.

I always had the conversation with Henry Silverman.

We would always ham-and-egg it back and forth about the leverage level that we wanted to operate at.

And we saw that when -- as you believe in the businesses; we've got great businesses here.

We've got great opportunities.

We're going to make sure we're optimizing across the globe; we're going to make sure we're optimizing all of the suite of services across each segment.

And when you are in that environment and you're thoughtful about your capital allocation and making sure you're investing in the business, I think your -- the comment earlier about making sure we're seamless, when you have a lot of acquisitions, like we've had in this business over the last number of years, it's always a good opportunity for a fresh look at things to make sure we're executing and everybody is working together, there's no silos across the organization, and that we can take advantage of all of the skills that are residing in different businesses.

This is a great chess game for me, and I'm excited about it.

Great, and I had one other question, just with regards to growth potential.

I was curious your guys' commentary on electronic tables, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the opportunity there.

And then I know in the past, you've mentioned other opportunities down the road.

Any update on Greece or Turkey or Brazil would be helpful.

Let's start with Greece, Turkey, and Brazil.

Obviously, Turkey is an interesting one; we continue to look at that.

We continue to look at Greece.

There was a change, I believe, made recently to the regulator in Greece, and we're anxiously awaiting, hopefully, a go-live.

So we haven't had that yet.

In relation to -- what was the other one?

Brazil.

We're going to have to wait until at least the next two weeks get over and done with in Brazil before we really know what' going on.

But I can assure you that we are monitoring all opportunities globally from a market perspective.

Those kind of markets, whilst maybe a little riskier than, say a North American [state] market, provide great rewards and opportunities and it's a way that we grow our business.

So we have teams of people looking at all those opportunities, and I'll continue to help Kevin with those as best that I can, not just in the lottery space but also in the gaming space, there are some opportunities.

Electronic tables are a real passion of mine because I think they're a phenomenal platform.

We are one of the -- if not the leader, one of the leaders globally in those games.

They were invented for the Australian market where live dealers weren't available, weren't allowed, and we dominate that market.

We've brought our products under shuffle into America for many years, but we've just started to get all the right products and the right combinations out there.

We continue to see some great performance across the board.

And frankly, for the last two years, it's been our biggest growing segment, and I still see great opportunities for it.

You're starting to see stadiums that all are popping up everywhere.

And again, our superior content really does help us drive good performance in that sector.

Great.

Thank you.

If you [Aussies] want to see it, go down to Aqueduct or Yonkers, and you'll see hundreds and hundreds of these things live.

Great.

Thank you.

Barry Jonas, Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Kevin, do you have a sense in your timing for getting up to speed, and should we expect to see any significant changes once you're there?

I would say just look at the leadership on the Board as one point of view, and having also had that type of experience with my last job at Norwegian with the Apollo guys and before that with Henry Silverman and before that with Saul Steinberg, I would just say that every one of those individuals was, we need to get this going immediately.

And so I would say I'm going to very quickly, hopefully, get up to speed, meet with all of the business leaders, meet with all of our customers, dig into the numbers, understand the drivers, and run with it.

So whether it's three months or less, it is definitely -- we'll have a lot to talk about on the next quarter call.

Great.

Gavin, can you give us some general commentary on how TwinStar is progressing right now?

The unit is still new for us.

We would like to think that all our platforms are doing well and obviously, the way it continues to hit records for us, which when you're a customer, you're going to spend a certain amount of your capital with it.

We believe we're getting the greater, the biggest share of that spend.

And whilst it is going [toward] the Wave, obviously, TwinStar isn't getting that same attention, but it's enabling us to build a strong portfolio of games.

It does stand out.

I don't see many instances of it not performing very well, and we're about to launch a great portfolio of games for which we'll see G2E.

We do believe it and the [eyeglass] platform on which runs are part of the future for us.

But we aren't a one-trick pony; we've just got a lot of stuff coming out and G2E is going to be very, very exciting for us.

Great.

And then just if I could ask one more.

I noticed that there was a nice step up in attributable EBITDA in the lottery segment.

I think it was up more than 50%.

Meanwhile, Italian tickets sales were down about 1%.

So just curious what drove that increase.

In Q2, we received a rebate for value-add taxes related to the Italian joint venture, which was a pickup of about $4.5 million for the quarter.

So that's primarily the driver of that increase in the AEBITDA coming through there.

Great.

Thanks so much, guys.

Thanks.

Daniel [Seuss], Morgan Stanley.

Thanks for the questions.

Just wondering, since the end of the second quarter, have you made any more open-market repurchases of debt?

And can you provide an update as to where junior debt repurchase capacity stands?

What was the last part of that question?

Could you provide an update as to what your current junior debt repurchase capacity is?

Capacity is -- we don't comment on available capacity for the repurchase of that debt.

I will say between now -- we just filed Q2 this morning, and there was no purchases in the period, because we would have been in a blackout period.

But any opportunities we have to repurchase debt will be done on an opportunistic basis.

Great.

Thanks.

And just with regards -- switching gears to the interactive side of the business, could you just give -- I think the growth is a lot stronger than any of us had anticipated there, and it's not just you; you can see it at Caesar's as well.

Could you just give high-level thoughts as to the market going forward for the remainder of the year?

Can we expect these growth rates to be sustained?

And in particular, are there any drivers?

Is it market-share driven from what we see over at IGT, mobile, or new games?

Just any additional color there would be helpful.

Sure.

I think part of the success of that portfolio of products is the fact that the best land-based content seems to resonate very well with the online mobile player as well.

And so, with the portfolios the product coming out of WMS, the Bally, the Shuffle, the Barcrest brands, we do have a lot of products that are coming out.

And we have Jackpot Party.

We have Gold Fish.

We have Hot Shot Casino.

Another new big app that we've just launched, which is focusing on some of our more classical slots, is the Blazing Sevens app.

So we think that's another impetus for growth for us, and we think it's another area in which we can continue to steal market share away and continue to delight players with.

So I think there is good opportunities for us going forward into the near future.

And as I said, we're blessed to have that huge portfolio of intellectual property, and we continue to build games so we continue to add to the portfolio.

Great.

And just one last one on that.

Is this an area where you see yourself deploying more capital and making M&A?

Are there any -- when you look at the landscape, are there any interesting assets out there?

We look at every opportunity, and obviously, where there's growth that's an area in which you would focus on more.

But that's part of the job of the management team and now sending it up to the Board, where they see opportunities that make sense, sometimes it's better to buy rather than build, expedite your growth.

In other areas, there's lots of different reasons for doing it.

But that is what we do as a business, and we look at it and we will continue to do so.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, everybody, for joining us this morning.

I'm very excited to be here and look forward to meeting all of you.

It's a great time to be beginning my journey here at Scientific Games.

Our second-results demonstrate we are executing well.

I believe we have a wide runway of opportunities ahead of us.

The months ahead are going to be exciting and fast-paced.

We will remain focused on executing our strategies, continuous improvement, and our overriding mission to empower our customers by creating the world's best gaming and lottery experiences.

Thanks and talk next quarter, and I will see some of you at some of the shows.

Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference.

This does conclude today's program.

You may all disconnect.

Everyone have a great day.