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Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Better Collective Annual Report 2025 Presentation Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Better Collective Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Jesper Sogaard. Please go ahead.
Jesper Søgaard: Thanks a lot, and good morning, and welcome, everyone, to Better Collective's Full Year 2025 Webcast. My name is Jesper Jesper Sogaard, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Better Collective. Normally, our VP of Investor Relations, Mikkel opens the call, but as he is currently out sick, I'll have the pleasure of doing so today. I'm joined today by our CFO, Flemming Pedersen, and I will provide today's business update in connection with our full year report that was disclosed yesterday. Please follow me to the next slide. We ask you to pay attention to this slide where we display our disclaimer regarding any forward-looking statements in today's webcast. Please turn to the next slide. Here you see today's agenda. I'll start by providing a business update, including some of the highlights for Q4 and full year 2025. Whereafter Flemming will take you through some of the financials before handing the word back to me for the key takeaways. As usual, we'll end the call with a Q&A session. Please turn to the next page. Let's dive into the highlights of report that for the first time is a combined Q4 report and a full annual report as we have moved the full year reporting forward by several weeks compared to earlier years. Please follow me to the next slide. Before turning to the details of Q4 and the full year of 2025, I would like to extraordinarily to take a step back. Over the past decade, we have successfully navigated multiple structural shifts across technology, regulation and market dynamics. Today, new themes such as AI and the emergence of prediction markets are increasingly shaping the industry landscape. Against that backdrop, it's relevant to provide a broader perspective on how Better Collective has evolved to reach its current position and what lies ahead. Better Collective has been built over more than 2 decades of continuous evolution in a fast-changing landscape. Our growth has come through a combination of organic growth and a series of acquisitions that have expanded our capabilities, strengthened our market presence and significantly increased our scale. Over time, this has enabled us to build a comprehensive ecosystem positioned at the intersection of sports media, sports betting and casino affiliation. The industry we operate in has never been static. I still remember the early shift from Yahoo being the leading search engine to Google gaining dominance, which was an early reminder of how quickly digital audience and traffic dynamics can change. Since then, regulation, technology and user behavior have continuously evolved and each structural shift has required us to adapt our model. We started as a small local affiliate business and quickly recognized that scale was essential to survive, which led to our transformation into a leading global aggregator. Over time, we also saw the strategic importance of owning stronger brands and direct audience relationships and gradually evolved into a global digital sports media group, while remaining anchored in affiliate marketing as our core monetization engine. Strategic acquisitions have played a key role in this journey, enabling us to establish strong positions in what are now some of the most important global markets, including North America, U.K. and Brazil, all while navigating changing regulatory environments. In parallel, we identified early that paid media would become an increasingly important acquisition and monetization channel, which led to the acquisition of Atemi and the subsequent significant scaling within the group. In essence, external change has consistently driven internal evolution at Better Collective. This long history of adapting to shifts in platforms, regulation and market structure has made adaptability a fundamental and embedded characteristic of the company. Importantly, we do not look back to anchor ourselves in the past, but to extract lessons from it. Experience across multiple market cycles provides perspective and informs how we prioritize investments, develop products and prepare for the next structural shift rather than the previous one. Today, we operate a scaled global platform with a very large audience reach, diversified monetization and strong positions across both sports betting and casino affiliation, supported by leading sports media brands and long-standing sportsbook relationships. Our positioning at the intersection of content, audience and iGaming is strategically relevant in an ecosystem that continues to converge and evolve. Looking ahead, the landscape will continue to evolve through AI, new wagering formats, regulatory developments and shifting user journeys. Our focus is, therefore, forward-looking. By learning from the past while preparing for what comes next, we believe we're strongly positioned for the next phase of industry development, supported by our scale, M&A track record, diversified business model and unique position at the intersection of sports media and iGaming. Moving back to 2025. The year has been defined by disciplined execution and structural strengthening of the business. We simplified our operating model, enhanced scalability across the organization and delivered on the full EUR 50 million efficiency program. This focus was about building a leaner, more focused and more scalable platform for long-term growth. We delivered on our full year guidance despite significant external headwinds, Brazil regulation, foreign exchange movements and sports win margin volatility all impacted reported performance during the year. Navigating through those factors while maintaining high profitability demonstrates the resilience of our diversified business. We are adding new layers to our ecosystem, strengthening engagement, data capabilities and partner value. The development within AI is on most companies and management's agendas these days. Let me also address this and its implications on Better Collective. AI is one of the most significant structural shifts in the digital landscape in decades. For Better Collective, it is first and foremost an enabler. We have embedded AI across product development, content optimization, data analysis and commercial optimization. Playbook is a clear external example, while internally AI is improving productivity, scalability and execution speed across the group. At the same time, we take a disciplined view on potential structural risks. We closely monitor AI-driven changes in search and discovery. Importantly, we remain unaffected by recent shifts and our traffic and commercial performance continue to demonstrate resilience, supported by strong brands and diversified acquisition channels. Most of our revenue base is structurally resilient. Within publishing, the existing recurring revenue share is not exposed once users have been referred to our partners. which provides a stable earnings foundation. Our advertising revenues are likewise not directly dependent on search dynamics as they are primarily driven by audience scale, engagement and direct commercial relationships. Paid media is also structurally robust. As a performance-driven, highly agile acquisition engine, we can dynamically allocate spend across channels and platforms if traffic patterns or user journeys shift. This flexibility significantly reduces platform dependency risk. [ esport ] in turn is built on strong direct community engagement and brand loyalty, making it inherently less reliant on traditional search and discovery channels. The area with the highest long-term exposure is future publishing growth, particularly related to new revenue share NDCs and CPA-driven NDC growth, where changes in search, discovery or user behavior could influence acquisition dynamics over time. We do not underestimate this risk. However, we have successfully navigated multiple structural shifts in the digital ecosystem over more than 2 decades and our diversified audience mix, strong brands and scalable platform give us confidence in our ability to adapt to future changes as well. My intention is not to suggest that AI does not introduce risks, but rather to emphasize that we are proactively addressing them and closely monitoring the development. Any potential impact is primarily concentrated in specific areas of our otherwise well-diversified revenue streams. which limits the overall exposure at group level. Another important emerging theme is prediction markets. During 2025, prediction markets have emerged as a structurally important addition to the broader sports and event-based wagering ecosystem. For us, this is an expansion of the total addressable market. Prediction markets introduce new product formats and attract incremental user segments while overlapping meaningfully with our existing sports and betting audience. Given our position at the intersection of sports content and wagering, we're structurally well positioned to support this evolution. We already have commercial relationships in place and are collaborating with relevant players. It's still early days with only a limited number of platforms live, and we expect increased competition in the coming year, which typically strengthens the aggregator position. Overall, we see prediction markets as a natural extension of our core business with the potential to diversify revenue streams and expand long-term growth opportunities. Lastly, we look forward both as shareholders and as sports enthusiasts to what is expected to be the largest World Cup in history. Importantly, for us, it will be played across some of Better Collective's core markets. Beyond its global appeal, the tournament represents a significant commercial opportunity. Historically, major football tournaments provide strong acquisition tailwinds, and we expect 2026 to be no different. The World Cup is likely to drive elevated user acquisition across our platforms as well as meaningful reactivation of dormant users and increased activity across our existing player base. This combination of new customer intake and high engagement levels supports both revenue growth and lifetime value expansion. Given our strengthened position with broader revenue mix and scalable platform, we believe we're well positioned to capture the incremental activity associated with the tournament. I'm extremely proud of the organization and my colleagues for navigating through another demanding period of change with focus and discipline. And I look forward to returning to a year of renewed growth in 2026. With that, let us move to the usual webcast. Please turn to the next slide. Overall, we are pleased to report a strong finish to the year with underlying growth and record profitability. Group revenue reached EUR 94 million in Q4, corresponding to minus 2% year-over-year and plus 2% in constant currencies. We were negatively impacted by a lower sports win margin compared to the year prior. Normalizing the sports win margin to a similar level as the year prior, revenue growth would have been 7%. Group costs were down 8% year-over-year, reflecting the disciplined execution and continued harvesting of synergies from acquisitions. We delivered record EBITDA before special items of EUR 37 million, translating into a 39% margin and growth of 10% year-over-year. In Brazil, we continue to see good activity levels in line with recent quarters with revenue above our expectations. However, the market remains affected by the marketing restrictions, which continues to dampen our ability to send new customers to our partners. In North America, revenue share amounted to EUR 7 million in Q4 as our revenue share database continues to ramp up, making it EUR 17 million pure revenue share for the year versus our own expectation of EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million. Value of deposits reached a record level of EUR 820 million in the quarter, up 6% year-over-year and 13% quarter-over-quarter. This was achieved despite being -- we continue to see strong momentum in Playbook, our AI betting solution, and I look forward to scaling the product across the U.S. and into additional geographies and platforms. Please turn to the next slide. Let me briefly put the 2025 financial performance into a longer-term perspective. Looking at the full year, revenue declined from EUR 371 million in 2024 to EUR 337 million in 2025, corresponding to minus 9% year-over-year. EBITDA before special items decreased from EUR 113 million to EUR 102 million or minus 10%. Since 2018, we have delivered a revenue CAGR of 35% and an EBITDA CAGR of 30% -- while 2024 and 2025 shows a temporary slowdown in organic growth, this must be seen in the context of significant headwinds from external factors such as foreign exchange headwinds on revenue of EUR 9 million as well as the regulatory transition in Brazil, which impacted EBITDA negatively by EUR 22 million and lower sports win margin volatility of EUR 17 million. These factors implied a combined headwind versus 2024 of more than EUR 40 million on EBITDA in 2025. Please turn to the next slide. Let me now turn to what we see as important part of the next chapter of growth journey driven by innovation with Playbook and FanReach. Starting with Playbook, we successfully introduced our AI-powered betting solution in 2025, just ahead of the NFL season. The product is designed to integrate naturally into how sports fans already consume content and make decisions. We have seen strong early engagement with millions of bets sent to our partners. Importantly, Playbook enhances user engagement and improves conversion strengthen the monetization of our existing audience while also opening new avenues for geographic expansion and product development. We will continue to invest in product refinement and international rollout to unlock further scalability. On the FanReach side, this is central to our advantage ecosystem. FanReach combines our proprietary first-party data with advanced audience segmentation, enabling more measurable, scalable and precise media solutions for advertising partners. FanReach was launched firstly in the U.S., utilizing data from selected brands, currently reaching more than 50 million sports fans across our network. We are moving beyond traditional performance marketing and adding a broader media monetization layer built on audience ownership and distribution strength. Together, Playbook and FanReach expand our monetization stack, deepen engagement and reinforce the structural scalability of the business. They are key building blocks for our next phase of profitable growth. Please turn to the next slide. On this slide, we show our new guidance for 2026 and the medium-term outlook. For 2026, we expect organic revenue growth in the range of 7% to 12%. On EBITDA before special items, we guide for growth of 8% to 18% or EUR 110 million to EUR 120 million. This reflects growth with lower cost base, continued focus on operational efficiencies and an expected stabilization of external factors compared to 2025. We also plan to execute an annual share buyback of EUR 40 million, in line with our capital allocation priorities and are confident in the long-term value creation potential of the business. At the same time, we remain committed to maintaining net debt-to-EBITDA below 3x, ensuring continued financial discipline and flexibility. Looking beyond 2026, for the 2027 to 2028 period, we expect continued positive organic revenue growth and target an EBITDA margin in the range of 35% to 40%. This margin ambition is supported by scalability in the business model, a maturing recurring revenue base, especially in the U.S. and increasing AI enablement across products and operations. Furthermore, we expect continued strong cash conversion and net debt-to-EBITDA to stay below 3x. With that, let us move to the next slide and over to Flemming.
Flemming Pedersen: Thank you, Jesper, and good morning to you all. Please follow me to the next slide as we dive into the financials. Let me start by bridging the Q4 revenue development in more detail. We started from Q4 '24 revenue of EUR 96 million. During the quarter, foreign exchange negatively impacted revenue by EUR 4 million. Sports win margin volatility reduced revenue by a further EUR 5 million, reflecting more player-friendly results compared to last year. In addition, the regulatory transition in Brazil impacted revenue negatively by EUR 3 million. In total, these external factors reduced revenue by EUR 12 million year-over-year. This was partially offset by EUR 10 million of underlying operational growth across the business, mostly driven by paid media, talent-led media and sports media. As a result, Q4 2025, revenue landed at EUR 94 million, corresponding to a minus 2% year-over-year and positive growth of 2% in constant currencies. The key takeaway is that the underlying business continues to grow, but reported performance in the quarter was impacted by temporary external factors. As these headwinds normalize, the operational growth becomes more visible in the reported numbers. Please turn to the next slide. Let me briefly comment on recurring revenue as revenue share remains the backbone of our recurring earnings model and supports visibility and cash flow generation going forward. Revenue share continues to account for approximately 3/4 of our recurring revenue base. In Q4 '25, revenue share amounted to EUR 41 million out of total EUR 55 million of recurring revenue. Looking to the North American market, historically, a larger portion of the revenue share income has come from hybrid deals with a meaningful upfront component. Over the past 2 quarters, however, we see a clear transition towards predominantly pure revenue share agreements. This represents a meaningful improvement in earnings quality as pure revenue share provides stronger long-term visibility and cohort value. For the full year, we outperformed our expectations in North America. We expected EUR 10 million to EUR 15 million in revenue share, but delivered EUR 22 million. Out of this EUR 17 million was pure revenue share. Importantly, this number would have been even higher in constant currencies, highlighting the underlying strength of the region. In short, North America is scaling with an improved revenue mix, strengthening the recurring revenue and compounding nature of our earnings base. Please turn to the next page. Let me now bridge the EBITDA development in the quarter. Lower revenue year-over-year reduced EBITDA by EUR 2 million, as I just spoke to. In addition, we deliberately increased paid media investment, which impacted EBITDA by EUR 5 million downwards. This reflects continued confidence in the long-term return profile of our paid media activities, where we, to a large extent, spend to harvest the revenue later through revenue share agreements. However, these effects were more than offset by EUR 10 million in cost reductions, driven by the execution of the EUR 50 million efficiency program and broader structural improvements across the organization. And a lot of these cost savings relate to the synergies from previous acquisitions. As a result, EBITDA increased to EUR 37 million in Q4 '25, representing a 10% growth year-over-year and the highest quarterly EBITDA in our company history. This clearly illustrates the operational leverage in the model even in a quarter with slightly lower revenue, external headwinds and increased growth investments, disciplined cost execution enabled us to expand profitability and deliver record EBITDA. Please turn to the next slide. Let me now turn to 2 of our main KPIs, net depositing customers and value of deposits. As expected, NDC levels in '25 were impacted negatively by the regulatory transition we saw in Brazil. The marketing restrictions on welcome bonuses continue to deliver -- continue to limit our ability to send new customers to partners in that market, which is reflected in lower reported NDCs. However, and importantly, Q4 '25 did not show a return to growth quarter-over-quarter of 9%. Also in Q4, value of deposits reached an all-time high of EUR 820 million, showing growth year-over-year of 7%. This is a very strong outcome, especially considering the regulatory headwinds in Brazil during the year. Deposit values are reported quarterly and are not accumulated, meaning this represents actual quarterly activity. The fact that we reached a new record despite regulatory constraints clearly demonstrates the strength and loyalty of the users that we have in the revenue share databases. In combination, the graphs illustrates that while new customer intake has been temporarily impacted, existing cohorts remain highly engaged and continue to generate increasing deposit activity. Furthermore, it signals that we are -- that we continuously manage to send higher-value customers to our partners. This supports the durability of our revenue share accounts and underlines the quality of earnings. Please turn to the next slide. Now let's focus on our funding position and our considerations regarding capital allocation. From a financing perspective, we also took an important step in 2025 that further strengthens our financial position. During the year, we signed a new EUR 319 million 3-year committed club facility with our banking partners, including an EUR 80 million accordion option as well as a new EUR 50 million dedicated M&A facility. This extends our financing maturity profile through October 28 and significantly enhances our financial flexibility. Access to long-term committed financing on attractive terms has been a structural advantage for Better Collective since the IPO in 2018 and has been a strong facilitator in our M&A strategy. It has allowed us to act with speed and certainty when strategic opportunities arise while maintaining a balanced capital structure and disciplined leverage profile. In a fragmented and fast-evolving industry, the ability to combine strategic M&A with stable financing is a clear competitive advantage. Moving to 2025. We guided free cash flow at the low end to be EUR 55 million and landed at EUR 38 million. The deviation was driven by short-term working capital timing effects of EUR 15 million shifting into 2026. We also invested in new significant partnerships in Q4, where we'll see the most of the upside from 2026 and onwards. These deviations are mostly timing and growth related in nature and do not reflect any structural change in the underlying cash generation profile in the business. Cash conversion for the year ended at 92%. Board of Directors and executive management has formalized our capital allocation framework, which is as follows: First, we prioritize deleveraging when net debt-to-EBITDA exceeds 3x. Second, we invest in high-return organic initiatives and selective value-accretive acquisitions. Third, we return excess capital to shareholders, primarily through share buybacks and secondarily through dividends. Overall, we believe this balanced framework supports our focus through many years. For 2026, the Board of Directors has decided on an annual share buyback of EUR 40 million, in line with this framework. Please turn to the next page as I hand the word back to Jesper for the key takeaways. Thanks.
Jesper Søgaard: Thanks, Flemming. Let me conclude with the key messages. 2025 was a year of disciplined execution and structural strengthening of the business. We delivered on our full year guidance despite significant external headwinds. In North America, revenue share ramp-up exceeded expectations. Innovation accelerated with Playbook and the continued build-out of FanReach. Looking ahead, 2026 marks a return to growth. We expect the World Cup in men's soccer to be the largest in history and played across some of our core markets to act as a big catalyst. Lastly, prediction markets is expanding our total addressable market and is becoming a clear tailwind despite it being early days. I'm proud of the organization for navigating a demanding period, and we look forward to delivering renewed growth in 2026. With that, we are happy to take your questions.
Jesper Søgaard: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Sebastian Grave of Nordea.
Peter Grave: Congrats on a strong result. And also thank you for a very comprehensive presentation. Now it's encouraging to see that you expect to return to growth here in '26 and with further top line expansion beyond that. I know you don't provide concrete numbers on the midterm target, but I'm going to try to push my luck anyway here. So the 7% to 12% growth in '26 is led by, easy comparisons in Brazil and from sports margins. And you also see significant tailwinds from a strong sports calendar here in '26 and prediction markets, as you highlight, Jesper. So I guess my question is, is this, i.e., 7% to 12% growth, is this as good as it gets? Or do you also believe that you're able to reach similar growth levels beyond '26?
Jesper Søgaard: Yes, it's a bit boring, but obviously, we will not sort of comment further on the targets for '26 and 2028. But looking at the coming years and also a bit to the second half of '25, where we have seen the underlying growth in the business, we really feel we are on track to deliver this growth. And we're sort of further out feeling confident about continued organic growth. But for us, it's too early to start to put numbers to the outer years.
Peter Grave: I guess it's not a big surprise, but I tried at least. My second question is on the midterm margin guidance, which you also reiterate here, 35% minimum from '27 kind of big leap from the implied margin here in '26. So how do we get to that number? And I mean, if this is just a question about scalability, well, then I guess the implied growth rates you give here for '27 is quite upbeat?
Flemming Pedersen: Yes. I think the guidance, Flemming here, I can try to answer that. The guidance that we give 35% to 40%, you can say, reflects, of course, the scale that we see in the business, mentioning Jesper touched upon some of the growth areas that we see with Playbook, the AI bot that we have launched, FanReach speaking into the advantage and increased CPM revenue. And then you can say the scale from that is, of course, also reflects our opportunities for investing further to mention one is paid media, where we also can, you can say, invest part of the increased revenue into further growth when we see opportunities and of course, also in other growth areas such as talent-led media, which comes with a bit lower margin. So I think the scale is one thing. And with these, you can say examples, we see a higher margin. Actually, in Q4, we saw a 39% margin. So it's a scale that will drive this on a much lower cost base that we have seen in past years.
Peter Grave: Okay. And just the last question from my side on the EUR 8 million tax effects you bake into the guidance in '26. I guess it's fair to assume a similar effect on top in '27, given the delayed impact on sports betting taxes in the U.K. Now I guess my question is, is this a gross or a net number that you provide? Meaning do you assume any mitigating actions from operators such as lower odds, et cetera? Or this is just sort of a mechanic gross impact from higher taxes?
Flemming Pedersen: It's a number that we have, I would say, tried to assess as a net number also with mitigating factors because there will likely also be market factors such as lower bidding prices within paid media in the Google auctions. And you can say, in general, likely, you can say, lower competition. So there are also counteracting factors where we have a good position. So this is a net number that we have tried to assess and also continue that into the outer year guidance.
Jesper Søgaard: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Hjalmar Ahlberg of Redeye.
Hjalmar Ahlberg: Just wanted to check a bit on -- if you look at the Q4 numbers here, we see that CPM and sponsorship saw good growth at least what I could see initially here. Just wanted to hear if for the CPM part, if you already see kind of positive impact from Advantage there or what drives the CPM improvement?
Flemming Pedersen: Yes. So on the sort of CPM and overall advertising developments, yes, we are starting to see effects of optimized ad campaigns and formats that is sort of part of the Advantage ecosystem. And as we already -- as I alluded to in the speak, is that we now have launched here in '26, the FanReach part of Advantage. So yes, we are gradually incrementally seeing the effect of Advantage, which we also expected that, that would be the way we could tell it in the numbers, incremental and gradual development.
Hjalmar Ahlberg: Okay. And also listening to the Playbook here, it sounds like you are getting ready to expand the product internationally here. Is this something you will do during the World Cup? Or is it a broad expansion or is it more gradual expansion in new markets?
Flemming Pedersen: So the view we take on this is that we obviously look at core markets and where the product would be most relevant and have the biggest impact. And that guides decisions for the launch. And yes, we have obviously in mind that the World Cup is a good event to have a product like a Playbook out. So yes, we are assessing where we will see the biggest effect from launching Playbook and have the World Cup in mind.
Hjalmar Ahlberg: And then just a question on your efficiencies here. So really strong progress in cost savings during the year. Do you see more efficiency from here? Or is it more that you have the new cost base now and then the next step is maybe more to invest in growth?
Flemming Pedersen: I think we are, of course, constantly driving efficiencies throughout the business, and now we have a new framework. So this is what we will go with. And you can say the primary focus is now to scale revenue from here on that lower cost base. So hence, also why the higher margin guidance for the outer years. So it's -- yes, it's a constant work in progress, but I think the big chunk we have behind us.
Hjalmar Ahlberg: And then just a final one. I don't know if you have a comment on that, but looking at the kind of seasonality for the year, I guess, World Cup means that Q2, Q3 could be a bit more seasonally stronger than normal. But if you have any flavor on the seasonal effect over the year, it would be interesting to hear.
Flemming Pedersen: No, you're correct on that, that the World Cup will sort of support Q2 and Q3. And then as usual, Q4 will be the quarter with the highest activity for our business.
Jesper Søgaard: I will now pass to the speakers for questions via the webcast. All right. And I'll be taking those. So yes, there in Danish, I'll try and just sort of get to the essence of the questions and read that out loud. Yes. And it has always been already been answered to some extent because it relates to the margin profile in '27 and '28 and the structural drivers. And essentially, I think we will not -- like Flemming covered that just before. So I'll move to the next question, which relates to the continued buildup of our revenue share database, in particular in North America, whether we can quantify how big a part of the future EBITDA growth in '26 to '28, which is expected to come from already existing users rather than new depositing customers. And no, we are not quantifying that. But I think as the value of deposits show, there is a very high quality in the database and players already there. So in general, a significant part of the revenue and earnings generated are stemming from our databases, existing databases. And then a last question. Elon Musk implemented a new policy on X, which limited gambling affiliation marketing. Please comment if you noticed any impact on your partnership with X for Playbook. And we have seen no changes. And with that, I think we are at the end. So thank you very much for showing interest in Better Collective, and we wish all of you a very nice day. Thank you. Bye.
Operator: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.