Q1 2022: All-time high revenues with US sports leading the way

QUOTE FROM OSKAR MÜHLBACH, CEO
“The first quarter of 2022 was yet another revenue record for Raketech Group, much thanks to our recent ATS acquisition that contributed with substantial and important US revenues. Which, during the quarter was neck on neck with Sweden as Raketech’s largest market, showcasing a growth of 380% in absolute terms year over year.”

Q1 2022 FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS

• Revenues totalled EUR 12.7 million (EUR 8.3 million).
• US revenues amounted to EUR 2.4 million (EUR 0.5 million), representing an increase of 379.9%.
• Sports revenues amounted to EUR 4.3 million (EUR 1.4 million), corresponding to 34.2% (17.0%) of total revenues.
• Organic growth amounted to 6.8% (5.4%).
• EBITDA amounted to EUR 5.1 million (EUR 3.2 million), corresponding to a margin of 40.1% (38.7%).
• Earnings per share after dilution amounted to EUR 0.05 (EUR 0.03).

Q1 2022 OPERATIONAL HIGHLIGHTS

• Continued strong growth for Infinileads and QM Media, once again showcasing our ability to grow acquisitions by exchanging best practices, optimizing commercials, and providing access to central BI/Analytics and tech resources and infrastructure.
• Inhouse development “Affiliation Cloud”, a login one-stop-shop providing external affiliates with competitive commercials, a performance marketing media library and site performance and comparison analytics.

SUBSEQUENT EVENTS AFTER THE END OF THE PERIOD

• Clare Boynton and Pierre Cadena nominated to join Raketech’s Board of Directors
• Revenues in April 2022 amounted to EUR 3.8 million (EUR 2.8 million).

CEO OSKAR MÜHLBACH COMMENTS ON THE QUARTER
Total revenues amounted to EUR 12.7m, which corresponds to a 53% growth. EBITDA subsequently increased with 59% to EUR 5.1m in absolute terms. Sport revenues as share of total amounted to 34.2%, in line with our strategic goals. In absolute terms this corresponds to a growth of 208%, primarily driven by acquisitions.

Margins from our more mature and/or casino dominated markets continued to be comfortably strong, at 47%, but with the sports and investment heavy US market making up almost 20% of the group total we, as expected saw group margins, decline slightly from previous quarter, however increasing year over year, thanks to benefits of scale.

I am furthermore pleased to see that our previous 2021 acquisitions, QM media and Infinileads, targeting markets such as India, the South of Europe and the US continued to show growth in the span of 35-85%. Once again, a proof of our ability to grow acquisitions by exchanging best practices, optimizing commercials, and providing access to central BI/Analytics and tech resources and infrastructure.

During the quarter we have however also seen headwinds, particularly in Finland due to recently imposed regulations on gambling advertisement. Essentially all large operators have chosen to significantly lower or withdraw completely from this market which subsequently has led to a decline in marketing and affiliation investments. Additionally, our largest asset Casinofeber has seen a slight decline, however to a large extent offset by other Swedish assets growing confidently. However, considering it’s a large asset it dampened the Swedish growth slightly during the quarter.

Generally speaking Q1 of 2022, Finland and Casinofeber aside, was however a stable quarter in which we saw good performance across the line of affiliate assets. In the US we are continuing to build and invest in mechanisms to add affiliation to non-affiliation assets, and I am glad to conclude that we already have approximately 10% of PicksandParlays revenues coming from affiliation. We look forward to continuing to invest in this area and expect the affiliation share to increase over time as we improve the mechanisms and transfer the learnings to all other assets in the US.

With regards to other growth investments, I am excited to present our latest growth business area, developed inhouse; “Affiliation Cloud”. This is a unique single login one-stop-shop, which to the affiliates provides world class competitive commercials, automatically sorted and optimized top lists based on user data, and a performance marketing media library, access to unique site performance and comparison analytics data powered by Raketech’s full portfolio of websites across the globe. To the operators the Affiliation Cloud provides easy access to a world of vetted, compliant, and highquality affiliates, saving both time and money, while improving marketing efficiency. Currently we are beta testing the Affiliation Cloud, and we expect to roll it out full scale during H2 2022 and we project it to add at least EUR 10m worth of incremental revenues annually within 2 years from launch, at approximately 10-15% margin.

OUTLOOK

April revenues totaled EUR 3.8m which is slightly lower than previous months, driven by a slowdown within our US betting tips and subscriptions offering, expected as an effect of low season for this area. With relatively stable US operational costs, in particular from our tipster subscription services, we expect margins for this specific market to decrease during Q2 due to seasonality before increasing again during peak season. This in combination with current growth investments will lower margins slightly for the group during Q2. With that said it is important to point out that our full year projections for 2022 with regards to financial performance are unchanged. We are still aiming at a top line revenue in the span of 50-55 million euros and an EBITDA margin between 40 and 44 percent. We believe that it is likely that we land in the higher end of this interval with regards to revenue and in the lower end with regards to EBITDA margin. H2 is traditionally a stronger period and with the World Cup in Football in November we have no reasons to believe otherwise this year.

Finally, I want to emphasize that I am very happy with the position we are in. We have a solid footprint on most important growth markets in the world, the transformation from offline to online within iGaming is quicker than ever, affiliation as a marketing solution is more relevant than ever and we have a great global portfolio of assets and a solid organization in place in the most important growth market in the world, the US. All this, in combination with the launch of Affiliation Cloud, basically making our proprietary technology available for external affiliates, Raketech is in pole position, and I am very much looking forward to the future

LINK TO REPORT
The full Interim Report is available on https://raketech.com/investors/

REPORT PRESENTATION
CEO Oskar Mühlbach and CFO Måns Svalborn will present the report in a conference call and webcast today May 11 at 09:00 CEST. The presentation will be held in English and will be concluded with a Q&A session.

Link to the presentation: https://tv.streamfabriken.com/raketech-q1-2022

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