Gerard Griffin : I think, I’ll start in terms of — if I look at it from an operating spend point of view, sports rights are completely within our control. It’s our decision if we want to add incremental sports rights into the portfolio, and we will only do that where we see the kind of return that will contribute to our profitability and our growth. When you look at our expenses outside of people cost, they’ve grown in single digit range. So, we expect to continue to manage that line very tightly. Similarly, when you look at what we’ve done last year and our focus on run rates and profitability for people costs that’s also within our control. It’s our decision where we’re investing our talent and where we’re deploying them.
And in the end of the day, there is variability in the future, but we’ve got a very much a visceral focus on run rates, how we are deploying capital and investments going forward. On the revenue side, year in, year out, the depth and scale of our portfolio, both our content and product portfolio enables us to deliver significant value to our client base. We have got over 900 plus sports betting clients globally. From that point of view, we feel good about us addressing a growth rate that’s in line with the market. Incrementally to that, given the investment we have in new products and the innovation within the company and our pricing capabilities, that’s how we can index above market growth rates. Again, if you look at the history of the company, we’ve delivered on that and we continue to deliver on that based on the guidance we’re giving this year.
Again, the future is not defined, but, when I look at the capabilities we have within this company, more than any other, I think company in our space, we have the ability to scale and grow.
Operator: Our next question comes from Jordan Bender with Citizens JMP.
Jordan Bender: Good morning, everyone. Gerard, I want to follow-up on the share repo comments you made earlier. Is there a way to think about cadence, whether it’s dollar amount or just number of shares once that trading window opens here in a couple of months?
Gerard Griffin: Jordan, as you know, with these 10b5-1 plans, we will obviously be working with an investment bank in terms of the execution. Under the plan, we’ll be managing the level of spend based on the trading volume of the stock and where the stock price is landing. We obviously will be only doing a percentage of the trading volume. We have a low liquidity in the market. But as you know, with these kind of plans, generally you’re looking at a 10% to 15% as sort of governor on the purchasing you would do just so you’re not influencing the stock in an abnormal way. Outside of that, it will be opportunistic. It will depend on where the stock is and the trading volumes. The plan is governed by its parameters. Their standard parameters is nothing unusual in there. We’ll see how it evolves over the coming quarters.
Jordan Bender: And then just on the net retention ratio, that seems to have fallen off in the back half of the year. Is there anything to kind of call out on that?
Gerard Griffin: No. I think it’s scale. It’s still a very strong, any ratio above 100 is really strong. What I would say is, when you think about the additional adds to our portfolio with the NBA and ATP rights and to some of the focus on client centricity, I’d say, to put it in my old parallel, same store sales should be stronger in ’24 than they were in 2023, so that will obviously help the ratio going forward.
Operator: Our next question comes from David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.
David Karnovsky: Hi, thanks for the question. Carsten, with AV streaming, it’s a fairly developed market internationally, more nascent in the U.S., but we have started to see products come through from some of the leagues like MLB and NHL or NFL with your competitor. Curious first what you’re seeing in terms of engagement with these live streams? And then maybe with the NBA specifically, just given they’re going to negotiate overall media rights soon, do you see an opportunity coming out of that process for more dedicated betting streams that you could power?
Carsten Koerl: Yes. That’s a good question because it looks into the future. And I think where this is going to is hyper-personalization. So you’re going to need to know the sport fan, you’re going to need to know which team, which player, and then you need to give him a customized experience. That’s where this is going. Foresight is touching on this first, well, we are using already deep data to show some information about the match, which you can’t see. So you visualize the performance, you anticipate what is the board speed, and you’re giving this experience to the user. The next step is to really customize this for the user and then to stimulate the user for whatever you want to do with monetization. It can go into sports betting, but it’s not limited.
It’s merchandising, it’s ticketing, it’s sponsoring. Now speaking to our partners on the NBA side, that’s exactly what they’re looking for. So the future of this is hyper-personalization, trying to embed all the data points and all this information, and giving a very enriched digital product to the sport fan. The competition here is globally for the Tier 1 sports and the NBA prides themselves to be the most innovative sport. So for us, that was one of the big decision points. While we choose NBA as our premium partner for this to be innovative, but that’s where the market is going. And I think for the Tier 1 rights holders, that’s a very important aspect to use technology to distribute their product further. Yes, there is a good side aspect for us in sports betting, given the size of the global media market, you see where this is trending to and Sportradar is embedding itself as the technology partner, premium partner for the NBA.
Operator: Our next question comes from Stephen Grambling with Morgan Stanley.
Stephen Grambling: Can you hear me?
Carsten Koerl: Yes.
