Everplay Group (LSE:EVPL) Q2 2026 Earnings Call

0:00 Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Everplace 2026 Interim Results presentation. I am joined today by Rashid Varasha, our CFO and COO. I will start out with an overview of the group's operational and strategic progress in the first half. Then Rashid will take you through the financial review. And finally, I'll return to cover our strategy and the outlook. The first half of 2026 was a period of solid progress within the company, preparing for a very strong second half of the year. We had no large launches during the first half, as well as a delay in the launch of Hell Let Loose Vietnam, which naturally impacted the results. Excluding the impacts of our exit from physical distribution, Group revenues declined 5% year-on-year to 67 million pounds, which we think was a very respectable performance leading up to all our big launches in the second half.

1:00 Our resilient back catalog yet again delivered very strongly, with revenues growing in the half, which we of course are very happy about. We released six smaller new games in the first half, which were mostly well received, but didn't quite match the hugely successful breakout Date Everything in H1 last year. The key focus during the first half was preparing for and investing in our major new releases in the second half, foremost Hail Let Loose Vietnam and War Dogs. This of course resulted in a very significant H2 rating this year, which was as expected and already communicated. As a result, adjusted EBITDA came in lower than last year at 9 million pounds.

1:48 We progressed with several strategic initiatives during the half. We expanded the pipeline of first-party IP titles, and we implemented a number of organizational changes designed to improve execution and efficiency, including the reorganization of Team17 into three core genre pillars, and focusing a slimmer Astrogon towards its core IPs. We also continue to attract very high-quality new talent to the Group, including the hire of a new Chief Growth Officer. I'll talk more about these topics later on. We ended the half with a strong cash balance of 57 million pounds, providing ample capacity to fund organic growth and do selective M&A.

2:36 The Board declared an interim dividend of 1.1 pence. Most importantly, we have entered the second half with real momentum. H2 sales to date have been significantly ahead of our expectations with record performances of our new releases, Hell Let Loose Vietnam and War Dogs. As a result, I am delighted to announce that we expect our 2026 full year results to be materially ahead of current market expectations. Now, let's look at the operating performance of our three businesses during the first half. Turning first to Team17, revenues declined by 16% in H1 compared to H1 last year, where we had some very popular titles being released.

3:25 The half was also very impacted by our decision to delay the launch of Hell Let Loose Vietnam from June to August. However, Team17 still launched four new small titles, Lumintail, Syntopia, War Drum and Rogue Point. Lumintail and Syntopia performed very well, although not quite matching the performance of Data Everything last year, so revenues didn't reach the same level as the prior period. The back catalog was down 5% due to the non-recurrence of a couple of platform deals. But on the other hand, it benefited from the expansion of several of our established titles onto new platforms, including Worms WMD on Amazon Game Night, Overcooked All You Can Eat on Netflix, and Nice Day for Fishing on Epic. This enabled our games to reach new audiences.

4:19 So a very robust performance overall. A highlight of the half was Team17 being named Indie Publisher of the Year at the MCV Develop Awards, which is a strong external endorsement of the quality of our people and portfolio. A huge congratulations to the team! Looking ahead, Team17 is positioned for very strong growth in H2, underpinned by outstanding sales from new releases Hell Let Loose Vietnam and War Dogs, which I will come back to later, but also the additional new titles launches, Silver Pines, What Goes Up and Hot Coast Spaces still to come. We also announced the next installment of Team17's iconic Worms franchise, Worms Galactic Tactics at Gamescom. It's coming in 2027.

5:11 It's great to have our iconic IP alive and kicking. Storytoys delivered another excellent performance with revenue growth of 43%. Downloads exceeded 18 million during the half, with active subscribers increasing by 22% year-on-year to 408,000. The team released 394 app updates across the portfolio, maintaining a strong engagement and fresh content, including adding three new franchises for the LEGO Duplo Disney app, including Toy Story. LEGO Bluey made a strong revenue contribution in the half, including the Bluey Apple Arcade Ultimate Playdate campaign, which brought Bluey coloring content to Disney Coloring World. The app also received several industry accolades, including winning Best Mobile Game of the Kids Screen Awards, as well as Best Licensed Video Game Project at the Bologna Licensing Awards.

6:14 Storytory's partnership with Netflix continues successfully, with My Very Hungry Caterpillar now live on Netflix Playground. Looking ahead in age two, plenty of new content is already out, including a school play pack for LEGO Bluey and George gets a hearing aid for LEGO Duplo Peppa Pig. We're also working on ramping up user acquisition and cross promotions between the ads. At Astrocon, revenues declined by 20% or by 6% if we exclude the impact of the exit from physical distribution. The business has refocused on its core IP franchises, which help deliver a robust back catalog performance, supported by five paid-for DLCs, special editions and the Switch 2 release of Police Simulator Patrol Officers.

7:08 Two smaller new first-party IPs were released in the half, Ranger's Path into PC Early Access and Underground Garage on PC. Both unfortunately did not meet internal expectations, and as a result of recent divisional performance, reorganization initiatives have been completed during the half. We have reduced headcounts and costs and recently introduced several centralization initiatives. We only have one CEO in Astrogon now, as opposed to two co-CEOs. Looking ahead, we expect a solid financial performance from Astrogon. We launched Bus Simulator 27 last week, which, despite some early issues, still contributes well to Astrogon's revenue. Still to come, we have the full release of Seafarer, and we have also announced Construction Simulator Evolution into Early Access and the next installment of Police Simulator, reinforcing the long-term opportunity in Astrogon's first-party portfolio.

8:07 With that, I'll now hand over to Rashid for the financial review.

8:13 Great, thank you Michal. Group revenues decreased by 8% to 66.9 million in the first half, or by 5% on an underlying basis excluding the exit from Astrogon physical distribution. The decline reflected lower new release revenues given the phasing of the Group's major 2026 releases to H2. Accordingly, we expect strong double-digit growth in the second half. As touched on by Mikel, Team17 revenues declined by 16% with strong performance from the back catalogue offset by lower new release revenues. Story Toys delivered very strong growth up 43% driven by LEGO Bluey which launched last year and their Netflix partnership.

9:02 Astrogon sales fell 6% on an underlying basis excluding physical distribution revenues. The back catalogue once again delivered excellent performance with a marginal increase to 64.3 million, strong contributions from titles such as Overcooked, Hell Let Loose, Dredge, Disney Colour and World, Lego Duplo World and Police Patrol to name a few. New release revenues came in below the prior year level of £2.7 million, reflecting the tough comparator from Date Everything in H1 2025, lower than expected revenues from Astragon new releases and the planned H2 weighting of our major releases this year. First-party IP revenues declined 18% due to a couple of non-recurring platform deals from the prior year, as well as a focus on new content in H2.

9:56 However, still represented 31% of Group sales. The original Hell Let Loose, along with Golf With Your Friends and Police Patrol, all made good contributions. Third-party revenues were broadly stable at £46.4 million, supported by Overcooked, Dredge, Disney Colony World, Lego Duplo World. Gross profit decreased by 29% to £23.9 million, with gross margin falling to 35.7%. This was due to several factors, lower sales for Hell Let Loose and Date Everything, higher amortisation cost, a 1.9 million title impairment, platform deals in H1 2025 and the timing of royalty payments and mixed effect from lower margin back catalogue revenues linked to lower first party revenues.

10:49 Specifically, within the cost of sales line, capitalised development costs amortisation increased to £9.7 million, mainly due to title released over the last 12 months. Expense development costs increased as we continued to invest in back catalogue content and the Story Toys Netflix partnership. Royalty payments reduced modestly by 1% sales to 29.5%. Looking ahead, a significant improvement in gross margin is expected in H2 2026 as revenues from major second half releases is recognised. For full year 2026 as a whole, gross margin is anticipated to be within the recent historical range.

11:35 Adjusted EBITDA decreased to £9.2 million with a margin of 13.8%, reflecting lower gross profit and operating deleverage in the first half. Admin costs increased to £22.3 million, driven by higher marketing investment ahead of major H2 launches and higher staff costs associated with enhanced key functions across the Group. Acquisition-related costs and adjustments rose to $6.2 million due to IP acquisitions in FY 2025. Looking ahead, a sharp improvement in adjusted EBITDA is expected, with very strong double-digit growth in adjusted EBITDA in H2 margins returning to broadly FY 2025 levels.

12:21 Looking further down the P&L, a 2.2 million tax charge includes a one-off 1.3 million prior year adjustment. This resulted in a small reporting loss after tax of 0.6 million. However, adjusted profit before tax was 8.8 million, adjusted profit after tax was 5.3 million and basic adjusted EPS was 3.7 pence. Capitalised development costs increased to £16.4 million, spread across 20% more titles than in H1 2025. In line with our strategy of elevating and investing in our existing first party franchises, first party IP represented 65% of capitalised development spent in the half.

13:09 For full year 2026, we expect capitalised development costs to be in the range of 35 to 40 million, reflecting the higher number of titles in development, with first party IP accounting for around two thirds of our expenditure. Operating cash conversion was strong at 128% and the Group ended the first half with cash of $57.1 million, which was slightly below the same period last year due to lower adjusted EBITDA, higher dividend payment of $2.7 million and higher capex offset by lower acquisition-related expenditure. Thank you ever so much for listening and I'll now hand you back to Mikel. Thank you, Rashid. Our strategy remains focused on four key pillars, building long-term first-party IP roadmaps, discovering and nurturing innovative third-party games, maintaining disciplined cost control, and driving organic and inorganic growth.

14:08 In H1, I'm pleased to say we made good progress across each of these priorities. Our first party franchises are very important to us. We have more control and greater visibility of performance and we get higher margins. We can more easily operate and sustain lifecycle revenues through additional content and back catalog sales. The first party IPs create a more solid foundation for us. In H1, as already mentioned, Astrogon launched a small new title, Ranger's Path. This has been followed in H2 by Team17's successful launch of Hell Let Loose Vietnam, the next installment of our top-selling franchise, and Astrogon's Bus Simulator 27. We have also announced four additional titles supporting our healthy pipeline. Construction Simulator Evolution, a new Police Simulator game, Golf With Your Friends 2, and Worms Galactic Tactics.

15:07 Third-party titles also remain very important for us, and we're committed to discovering a broad range of new and exciting games, which we can nurture over time in our back catalog. In H1, we brought four new titles to the market. Team17's Lumen Tail was a particular highlight, receiving a very positive response from the role-playing audience. But there is no better example of our successful nurturing of third-party titles than the Overcooked franchise, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in August. The franchise has attracted more than 100 million players across PC and console platforms, and we extended its audience further during the half, releasing Overcooked All You Can Eat on Netflix.

15:54 Since the period end, we also launched the hugely successful War Dogs, Team17's first title with our strategic partner Bulkhead, which I will come back to in more details shortly. As we own a stake in Bulkhead, you could of course argue it's a bit of a first party IP title as well. Our capex on the new title has increased this year, managed within a disciplined capital allocation framework. Ultimately, we are investing in more titles to secure our healthy pipeline, while focusing expenditure on games where we have confidence in good returns, particularly on proven franchises with established communities. When considering our higher capex, it's important to reiterate the strong, consistent track record we have of delivering good returns from our investments.

16:43 Since 2020, in aggregate, our investment in new title has exceeded breakeven within year one, and we have achieved a multiple return on our investments within three years. So while CapEx is increasing this year to a range of 35 to 40 million pounds and to a similar range for FY2027, we are confident in getting a good return from that. The increase in CapEx this year reflects our larger pipeline of new games, which is up 15% compared to last year. In fact, average spend per title is broadly flat this year. However, we are and should be investing more in our established first-party titles and also when we come across highly proven games and brands with large communities where we realistically can calculate a very strong return, with WarDogs providing a great example.

17:39 First-party titles will account for around two-thirds of our capex this year, and these titles have consistently delivered a higher return. We are confident that we are pursuing the right strategy for our shareholders. The performance of Helle Luz Vietnam this year has confirmed this. Finally, delivering organic growth remains a top priority. As I just mentioned, we do see opportunities to accelerate growth through occasional investments in larger titles such as War Dogs, but we will remain highly selective and only when we are confident in the risk-reward profile. We have also continued to strengthen the organization to support future growth, drive synergies and unlock greater values from future acquisitions.

18:25 As part of this, we are delighted that John Risick has joined Everplay as Chief Growth Officer to oversee new growth opportunities across the group. Most recently serving as CEO of Dovetail Games, John brings more than 25 years experience in gaming franchise and lifecycle management. It's great to have John on board and he's already making a real difference. Further investments were also made in central functions including people and culture, finance, IT and M&A as part of the move towards a more scaled service offering from our center. By centralizing, we are driving efficiencies across the Group and we enable the business units to stay agile and nimble. The reorganization of Team17 into three portfolio pillars, each focused on specific areas of the market and designed to deepen category expertise, has progressed well.

19:19 While the first half was quieter from an M&A perspective, selective M&A remains an important component of the Group's long-term growth strategy. We are very happy to announce that since the period end, we have exercised our option to increase our stake in SuperMedia Group, the parent company of Wardog's developer, Bulkhead. We now own 28% of the company, up from 20%. We invested an additional £2 million. Considering the outstanding performance of Wardog since launch, this has been a very attractive investment for the group, and we are very excited to further expand our partnership with Bulkhead within the shooter genre. With that, I will soon turn to the outlook, but before I do that, let's kick off with a clip from a game you might have heard of by now.

20:43 That was War Dogs, which we launched last week. And if you haven't heard about it, I'm not sure where you've been. It's fair to say that it is going very, very well. And I'm just so thrilled with the performance and want to say a huge congratulations to the team at Bulkhead and Team17. But H2 was going very well even before the War Dogs launched. Hell Let Loose Vietnam was released in August, delivering a record month one sales for the group, attracting peak CCUs over 65,000 and achieving the number one position on Steam's global bestseller chart. There were some technical issues affecting the first weeks of review scores, but the team is making solid progress fixing these issues, and the review scores have improved significantly afterwards.

21:34 And then our records were broken again this month with the launch of War Dogs into early access. The reception has been incredible. We have already sold well in excess of 1 million copies with peak CCUs well above 400,000. And the review scores have great momentum hitting 80% positive on Steam. As we speak right now, it is still the number one top-selling game on Steam. There isn't enough room on this slide to share all the other amazing stats on the game's performance, but this is truly a groundbreaking game. It's clearly going to be a very important franchise for the group moving forward, which makes our stake in Super Media Group all the more exciting. We have even more new content to come in H2, including Silver Pines, Hockrow Spaces and What Goes Up. The pipeline is building very nicely for 2027 too, with first party IPs, Police Simulator, Golf With Your Friends 2, Worms Galactic Tactics all due to be released, along with great third party titles such as Holstein and Westlanders. So we are very excited about the future pipeline.

22:44 Let's watch some trailers. Good things aren't made to last I've been locked inside my This one has your name on it Coming in hot Fatality Finally, looking at the outlook for the current financial year and following the strong start to H2 trading, we expect revenues and adjusted EBITDA to be materially ahead of current market expectations. We expect adjusted EBITDA margin to be broadly in line with FY 2025 and capitalized development expenditure in the range of 35 to 40 million pounds. I'm also excited by the prospects of 2027, where we see further room for growth due to the strong pipeline of

24:14 new releases we have and the high quality of games from this year entering the back catalog. Thank you all for listening to this presentation. If you would like to reach out to the team, our contact details will be available on our website through the investor section. Come on, come on. Nothing exciting ever happens around here.

25:34 I'd like to thank you for the management team for the presentation. We have had a number of pre submitted and submitted live questions. Just as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please type them into the q&a box situated on the right hand side of your screen. I'd like to hand over to the management team for the questions and answers session. Great. Hi there. Thanks for joining our Q&A session. I'm going to kick off with a few other questions. I think the first one is to Rashid. Are you able to add a bit more colour as to what is materially ahead of current expectation means? And how confident are you in achieving those new expectations?

26:18 Okay, yeah, thanks, James. So yeah, very pleased to announce a material upgrade. Our brokers this morning have raised guidance by 10% on adjusted EBITDA, and I believe a similar sort of value in terms of our top line revenue as well. So yes, there's still a long way to go. But obviously, we're feeling confident in terms of achieving those numbers for this year. That's great. Mikael, maybe you could talk about what part of the business is growing the fastest right now? So right now, definitely the shooter category with War Dogs and Hell Let Loose has the most momentum within Team17. But of course, StoryToy is also doing really well, adding a lot of new subscribers to their business.

27:12 Okay, and then maybe following on from that, you know, how pleased are you with the performance of Hell At Least Vietnam since launch? And how important is that franchise in driving the second half revenue momentum? It's very important. It's one of the factors why we're expecting higher results than previously. It has done really well since launch. While we did see some hiccups during the launch, it is now in a very good state with good user scores and selling well. So it's an important part of the puzzle for sure. Thank you. Rashid, what proportion of expected H2 revenues rely on unreleased titles versus the ongoing performance of the titles we've already released?

28:03 Yes, so we've now released majority of our key titles for the current year. We are expecting some smaller titles to be released in the final quarter of the year, but they'll be relatively small to our overall revenue contribution. Great. Sticking with the guidance comments, obviously it's great to have such strong launches second half of the year, but the bar has been set high for next year. So as we sit today, do you think it'll be possible to grow revenues in 2027?

28:46 For the underlying business, definitely. As we sit here today, we've had an exceptional performance from the two biggest games, Hell Let Loose and War Dogs. What made management decide to increase its stake in SuperMedia Group? Well, I think that was a fairly obvious decision during a great game that is performing very, very well.

29:37 And we had an opportunity to take a larger stake. So we just grabbed that one and are very happy with now owning 28% of Bulkhead. That's great. And, you know, speaking of Bulkhead, you know, several people are interested in just knowing if it's a usual type of typical publisher deal that we have with Bulkhead for War Dogs.

30:03 Yes, it's definitely what we refer to as our standard terms for a publisher deal. So there's nothing extraordinary in the deal structure commercially, but it's obviously working really well for both parties, James. I think I should highlight that point. Okay. And then just, I mean, on sort of a question on revenue recognition for War Dogs, given that it's guided, it's currently in early access, is revenue from early access sales recognised in full at the point of sale or deferred over the expected early access period?

30:45 Yeah, so it's standard recognition. There's no unusual accounting there. So the standard policy is on day of launch, revenues recognised. We're not a subscription business, which would be slightly different over the term of our subscription deal, whether it's six months, 12 months, whatever. But for us, yeah, it's a standard recognition. Mikel, what has been your top operational priority since taking over as CEO? Definitely on the organization side, we've included the new pillars. We have done some restructuring in Astrogon. We have added new people. So a lot on the organizational side has been a key focus.

31:36 Also started out focusing on, you could say, organic growth rather than inorganic growth via acquisitions. But that's definitely something we're going to look more into in the months ahead. A question on Astrogon. What is at the core of the recent problems here and what's being done to try and fix it? Well, we've done several changes to the organization and also very recently added more central initiatives to improve the quality. So we have additional quality assurance from Everplay Group before launching games, for example, to assess that everything is in good order and that we can help this company deliver Great results as they have done in the past Another one for Mikel.

32:33 What do you see is the biggest single opportunity for Everplay over the next two to three years? Well, I think doubling down on what really works and getting the most out of what we have today with some of these big launches Definitely a focus area. We have a chance to become a one of the market leaders in this category of shooter games. And also, of course, M&A is going to have a good impact over the next two or three years for sure. Thank you. Following the success of War Dogs, are there any other upcoming titles in H2 that you're particularly excited about? Or maybe 27 as well? Yeah, Silver Pines is trending really well.

33:21 I have a lot of wish list for that one and a good kind of like vibe in the community around the game. And then otherwise, we are of course looking very much forward to seeing the launch of our core first party IPs like police simulator and construction simulator and also golf with your friends and worms. Like it's great to have to actually get back on all these IPs that we own ourselves. Thank you, Rashid. Maybe you can take this one. I think it refers to our back catalogue. It's asking, how are existing classic games continuing to perform? Sorry, are our existing classic games continuing to perform and generate steady income for the business?

34:06 Yes, so our back catalogue performed exceptionally well in H1 as we've reported. And if we look at the longevity, James, yes, they are all performing very well and they add to obviously our overall revenue. So we're very pleased with the performance. Great. A question on cash, giving expectations for cash generation this year, considering the strong new releases we've had and thoughts around allocation of this cash going forward.

34:47 Shall I answer the first part of the question? So yeah, so again, very pleased. So as you're outlining in your question, James, so from a guidance perspective, we will beat the guidance for the full year in terms of cash, unless we decide to utilise the cash by signing a new M&A deal, which again, we're actively pursuing. I'll hand over to Michal just to quickly talk about what we're doing with M&A. Yes, we have established more structured processes around M&A and have an important part of Everplay looking at new targets and being very structured about it. We only want to do it if it really, really makes sense.

35:33 And therefore, we need a big pipeline of potential targets. But yes, that is something we're looking at for sure. Okay, that is actually all the questions that we have in at this stage. But I will thank you very much for joining the Q&A and I'll just hand back to Mikel. Well, thank you very much for joining and thank you so much for supporting this company. Thank you to the management team for joining us today. That concludes the Everplay Group's investor presentation. Please take a moment to complete a short survey following this event. The recording of this presentation will be made available on Gainz Investor. I hope you enjoy today's webinar.