Bragg Gaming Group Inc. (NASDAQ:BRAG) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Yaniv Sherman: Well, we’ve taken into consideration our plan. Naturally if we were able to roll out–the one thing that accelerating the rollout will naturally have a positive effect, but more importantly we’re trying to work off some working assumptions around the games performance. What could change, potentially change guidance is if some of the games produce or perform better than what we expected. There is no real way of knowing it before you launch a game, like most consumer-facing products, but I would say that alongside of production and deployment capabilities, the games’ stickiness and performance have the potential of moving guidance in that regard, so that’s something that we will naturally monitor and keep you guys and investors updated as we make progress through the second and third quarters.

David McFadgen: Okay, all right. Thank you.

Operator: Your next question is from the line of Jack Vander Aarde with The Maxim Group. Your line is open.

Jack Vander Aarde: Okay, great. Good morning guys. Congrats on the strong 2022 finish and strong 2023 outlook. Yaniv, I want to just point out, maybe in the fourth quarter, the number of unique players using Bragg’s games and content, excluding Wild Streak and Spin, that increased by 51% to 2.8 million, it looks like, in the fourth quarter – clearly robust growth in players, especially considering the macro. Can you just remind me what this action includes and what’s driving this kind of robust player growth, because it seems like the fourth quarter particularly stood out relative to the rest of the year. Thanks.

Yaniv Sherman: Well, unique players is also a function of marketing activity around the brand that we power, and as we mentioned, some of the market activity was around the World Cup so that created a surge not just in sports activity, but also in gaming activity, depending on the country that you were in. Naturally we have a large presence in places like the Netherlands and some of the U.K. and western Europe, and some of them had teams in the tournament so a lot of the marketing was done around it, and I have to say very cleverly sort of adjacent to the sports event, before and after them, and a lot of this also stems from a higher penetration on mobile. This was naturally the highest mobile penetration in World Cup history, so people were actually able to in some cases play through a game using their mobile devices, so overall what you’re seeing is mostly an effect of seasonally typical fourth quarter super-charged with increased marketing activity that resulted in increased unique players over the platform, both new players and existing players.

Jack Vander Aarde: Excellent, got you. Maybe just one more follow-up from me. Just looking at the overall headcount, it looks like that’s also scaled significantly since last year with over 400 employees, contractors, subcontractors. How are you thinking about headcount in 2023, and is that baked into your adjusted EBITDA guide? Thanks.

Yaniv Sherman: Yes, sure. Of course it’s baked into our guidance. We made a push–as I mentioned, we have an opportunity and we wanted to put more resources behind our both product development but also content development, that’s the main result behind it. As you can see, this is also a function of the overall activity. A company that runs or drives more than €5 billion in bets and almost $18 billion in and so forth, that also projects and requires more manpower around it, both from a development and competitiveness perspective, and especially in the regulated environment. Again, the Netherlands, just to give context, the company was heavily reliant on the dot-com market back in 2021. It’s a completely different business now both from a global but also from a practice perspective, so in that regard, it affects both the investment in margins but going forward, as I mentioned, in the second part of the year and into next year, we are looking to start harvesting the results of that investment.

The fact that we’re able to do that while maintaining growth and profitability, so top and bottom line, is a remarkable achievement, I have to say. Most companies at this point, they would have to sacrifice one or the other. We were able to do both. We just want to use this momentum on the back of the growth trajectory to make sure that we put that to good use and have good returns. But right now, our main capital is human capital, and I expect that beyond this year, there will be more of a steady state or incremental growth as we go into new markets, rather than this development push that we’re trying to . We’re basically shortening time frames instead of sort of stretching them out further into the future. We’d like to do that sooner rather than later.

Jack Vander Aarde: Okay, great. I appreciate the color. That’s it from me.

Yaniv Sherman: Thanks Jack.