Stephen Grambling : I guess a couple follow up on the reorg. One, I guess where are we in terms of the labor savings, achieving those? Where have they generally come from so far? And is the business right now being operated the way that the segment results are currently disclosed, or is it much more centralized? Thanks.
Gerard Griffin: Yes, the majority of the actions that we announced at the latter half of last year are complete. You’ll see the benefit of those flow through in ‘24 more in the second half of the year than the first half of the year. And we, as we indicated in our prepared remarks, as you’re thinking about your models and you’re thinking about EBITDA margins, think about sort of mid-teens for the first half of the year and then growing into the 20s and the second half of the year. It’s just a function of the sports rights and obviously the getting the benefits from the actions we took in ‘23, but also our continued focus and profitability in ‘24. From that point of view, that’s how you should think about it.
Carsten Koerl: Maybe if I can add more on the CEO personal note here. The teams are feeling extremely empowered with the reorganization. We focus razor sharply on the product, on the ROI and on the growth and the innovation, which is driven there. We have significant more clarity and significantly more focus to execute on this. So that comes from inside our organization. It needs some time to restructure now all teams and scale this down, but we feel very strong about this and we see very positive results already.
Stephen Grambling : Thanks. And maybe as another follow-up on that, I think this is the first earnings call since Gerard announced your departure. It’s not often we have, this kind of change in the midst of a search. I’d love to hear what you think are key focus areas for any incoming CFO and things you’d want to impart?
Carsten Koerl: Let me take this one. I think Gerard did a fantastic job. It’s not only Gerard in the Financial Department. Gerard installed a Chief Accounting Officer. We have here Jim sitting with us for the IR in the preparation and several other leaders, which have been installed in the last year. We feel very, very strong from a people perspective, from an organization perspective. And yes, it’s said that Gerard took a personal decision to depart, but this is a team exercise. We have a very strong team in place. As I said, we are very confident to find a replacement for Gerard, who is on the level of Gerard and who can help us to push the company further forward.
Gerard Griffin: Yes, I would just build on that. I haven’t left the building yet. But, as I think about the leadership team, there’s seven of us in the leadership team, that group is very much, as Carsten said earlier, very much focused on the priorities and the opportunities we have ahead of us. One of those things as we grow our top-line is operating leverage, as I said, in some of the other questions. While that may sound like a financing, it’s a visceral focus by the leadership on making sure we are investing in the right areas and we are managing our run rates, in a way that we are unlocking that value. That’s not going to change. Whoever comes into the CFO seat, as Carsten said, we have a very strong finance organization.
But more importantly, they are coming into a management team that’s dialed in on the opportunity. What they need to do is continue to focus us on the right ROIs, the right level of operating leverage and let the rest take care of itself. I think from that point of view, just to build on Carsten’s point, we have a very strong team in this organization. My personal decision aside, this company is well dialed in to continue to grow profitably.
Carsten Koerl: Operator, we’ll take our last question.
Operator: Our last question comes from Shaun Kelley with Bank of America.
Shaun Kelley: Hi. Good morning. Hi. Good morning, everyone. Can you hear me?
Carsten Koerl: Yes.
Shaun Kelley: Great. Thank you for squeezing me in here. I just wanted to go back to the sort of MTS and NBA growth that you saw, and just I’m thinking more about 2024, and just trying to get a sense of it. It goes back a little bit to, I think, David’s question at a high level. Are there any new geographic markets that are meaningfully outgrowing the core? And I guess, Carsten, the reason I ask is, obviously, we see some maturity and some regulatory headwinds in the more mature European markets, particularly the UK and the Netherlands. Just trying to think about where you’re seeing globally that meaningful outsized growth. Specifically is there anything in for Brazil? Or is that entirely upside if that market comes online in the second half?
Carsten Koerl: Hi, Shaun. We see Brazil, as I just told. The opportunity here is probably a EUR5 billion GGR per year for the next three years. That’s a EUR15 billion comparing it with the U.S. with a EUR10 billion that shows the size and scale. Of course, that is the optimistic case here that the regulation goes fully in place in a way that the sportsbooks are empowered to really invest decently in that market opportunity. So we are very bullish and optimistic on this. There are a couple of other small states in Latin America where we think that’s interesting. It’s interesting to look into. Africa continues to grow besides all the local issues which we see in Nigeria and South Africa, we see overall a strong growth here in Europe.
