Inspired Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ:INSE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

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Stewart Baker: I agree. I mean, the business is growing, so it does continue to get a bit more operating leverage, but there’s only so far that those margins can go right. And so, we might see a small increase in ’23 over ’22, but that’s obviously the margins are high to begin with this business that we love.

Jordan Bender: Great. And then, for my follow-up, absent M&A and kind of how should we think about the capital allocation priorities in ’23, you’ve been repurchasing shares throughout the year. I mean is that kind of how we should think about where cash is going for the year?

Stewart Baker: Yes, I think repurchasing shares is certainly in the capital allocation mix. I think the way our businesses are growing right now, there certainly isn’t any feeling that we need to generate growth by acquisition because we have pretty much as much growth as we can handle consistent with our balance sheet targets. We’re always looking for smaller tuck-in strategic acquisitions that can strengthen one of our businesses and give us assets or access to markets that we don’t have. I’d say right now, philosophically, our M&A attitude is, we don’t need to be paying unnecessarily high prices to buy earnings, but we’re very interested in strengthening our competencies and adding to our asset base. So, I think that’s how we’re thinking about it, and I think that’s realistically what you might be able to expect in 2023.

Jordan Bender: Great. Thanks.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Chad Beynon from Macquarie. Your line is open.

Chad Beynon: Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Also echo my remarks to Brooks. Congratulations. Brooks, I wanted to start with the gaming business and congrats on delivering all the Western Canadian orders in the fourth quarter. I know you talked about a few new markets that you’re kind of thinking about for ’23. But as we think about North American opportunities on the retail gaming side, as we look at a couple of years, is this still a priority to continue to get licensed and kind of color in the white space in other markets, or is it just harder to do, just given the types of machines you’re currently offering in the market? Thanks.

Brooks Pierce: Yes, thanks, Chad. Look, we think we have plenty of runways, you know this, but for everyone we’ll explain, we’re targeting the VLT market primarily with G2S because that’s the technology that we’ve kind of built our business on. So, there’s a number of opportunities across the Canadian provinces, certainly Oregon. So, those are the markets that we’re going for. Illinois is obviously now pretty much moved into a replacement market. I would say that doing anything in the Class 3 or historical horse racing or any of that space is not something that we’re contemplating at the moment. But we certainly have the competency to be able to go into those markets if we chose to. But right now we see line of sight to the VLT, G2S market is really the primary driver for our growth.

Chad Beynon: Okay, perfect. Thanks. And then, Stewart, just in terms of CapEx for the year, I don’t know if you provided that number, I’m sure it will be in the Q, but could you help us with that and then a number for ’23 and then also as an addendum to that, will the Betfred games that are deployed, will those kind of show an inflated CapEx number for this year, I know that will be a no margin when it’s printed from a P&L standpoint, but just trying to understand the free cash flow dynamics? Thank you.

Brooks Pierce: Yes, so let me start on the last bit, so in terms of the Betfred and Paddy Power, so they’ll go through revenue and cost of sales, as you say, approximately no margin. So, no impact on CapEx, but will negatively impact overall EBITDA margin. So, we’re going to try and make that as clear as possible going forward so we can strip that out. In terms of overall CapEx for the year, the ’23, sorry ’22 came in as we talked about on the prior call, just around the $40 million mark, and in ’23 gets slightly complicated because some of the CapEx that we’ve got does come with an upfront cash consideration from customers. So, if we strip that out, it’s probably in the region of kind of mid-$30 million, slightly up from where we talked about before. But see, there’s a bit of inflation from those numbers that we talked about before, but also there’s a lot of opportunities for us to invest in internally.

Chad Beynon: Okay, that’s great. Thank you, all. I appreciate it.

Brooks Pierce: Thanks, Chad.

Operator: And there are no further questions. At this time, Mr. Lorne Weil, I will turn the call back over to you for some final closing remarks.

Lorne Weil: Thank you, Operator. I don’t have much to say other than obviously we’re very happy with our performance last year. We’re very optimistic about our performance in 2023. We appreciate all of your support, and we look forward to speaking with you in about three months. Thank you.

Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

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