• Super Group lauds the benefits of Africa and Apricot.

• In +More: 888 shuts down NJ poker, Enteractive investor.

• Wynn Resorts beats tough comps and rides the inflation wave. 

• A slew of earnings from LNW, Red Rock, Full House, Golden, DoubleDown…

• Along with Genius, Accel, Everi, Catena Media and GiG.

Fame is but a fruit tree, so very unsound.

Super Group deal bears fruit

Who is selling what to whom: Betway owner Super Group announced its long-discussed €140m acquisition of software sportsbook technology from provider Apricot, another part of the shared-ownership ecosystem.

• The complex deal structure will see Super Group pay €100m up front to cancel an outstanding loan. 

• It will then pay another €40m in two chunks, plus an earn-out of €210m, contingent on Super Group’s sportsbook revenue more than doubling during the earn-out period, which runs through to 2035.

• Asked about the earnout, CEO Neal Menashe said it was a “really good deal based on the tech stack that we’re getting.”

Orbital: Recall, Super Group sold its B2B arm Digital Gaming Corporation to another company with shared shareholders, Games Global, last year, having acquired it to gain access to the US less than a year before.

• The share ownership-related deals merry-go-round will climax with the expected $2bn+ IPO of Games Global on the New York Stock Exchange later this year.

And breathe: Super Group continues to assess the viability of its US business as the company’s rapid growth in Africa and the Middle East highlights its lack of growth in the US. Q1 revenue from seven countries across Africa and the Middle East shot up 58% year-on-year to €140m, while the 13 states of the US accounted for just €5.3m.

• The Africa and Middle East region accounts for 37% of total revenue, up from 26% in Q1 2023, level with the 37% of revenue that comes from North America (mostly Canada).

• Overall revenue for Q1 rose 12% to €379m while adj. EBITDA increased 29% to €46.5m.

Closing time: Menashe said outside the US, it has identified a handful of smaller markets where it does not see a long-term path to profitability and is in the process of shutting them down. It is likely the US will follow.

• Menashe hinted the only possible reason for staying might be to hold out for further iCasino legislative progress. iCasino accounted for 77% of overall revenue in Q1.

• “For us really, the US states are no different to other countries,” explained Menashe. “If we can see a way to profitability, we will then do them. And if we can’t, then we have to take other action.”

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Venture capital firm Yolo Investments manages in excess of €500m in capital across 100 exciting fintech, gaming and blockchain companies. The Yolo Investments' Gaming fund, regulated by the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, has taken positions in fast-growth suppliers and operators, including Dabble and Enteractive. Yolo Investments (yolo.io) wants to hear from readers of this newsletter. Get in touch with your pitch, or for a chat about innovative products which can plug into our investment ecosystem.

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Bally’s is open to partnering with another operator on a casino resort development at the Tropicana Las Vegas site, the Las Vegas Review-Journal quoted chair Soo Kim.

Las Vegas Sands has priced a $1.75bn debt offering of senior notes.

888 is to shut down its New Jersey online poker site on June 3, according to Pokerfuse.

Enteractive has added Bettor Capital as a strategic investor in order to support its growth into the US market. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Wynn beats

High end, high bar: Wynn Resorts continues to “fire on all cylinders” in Las Vegas as the company’s properties came in with consensus-beating numbers and against tough comps, according to CEO Craig Billings.

• The comps are “getting tougher,” he added, before noting the impact of inflation on the company’s numbers with Wynn having the “luxury” of being able to reprice rooms every day to take advantage of demand.

• “We shouldn’t be surprised that results today, when compared to the past, look pretty good,” he added. 

In Macau, where the company continued to enjoy the post-pandemic rebound, he said Wynn continues to “punch above our weight” on revenue-per-hotel-room, generating “meaningful market share and substantial discretionary free cash flow.” 

Pipeline: Garnering the headlines this week were the new renderings for the Wynn Al Marjan project in the UAE, where Billings noted construction was “well advanced.”

• Wynn is also still pursuing a potential downstate development in New York.

• Billings said Thailand was also now on the radar, though the company had yet to see any regulatory or licensing structures emerge.

By the numbers: Revenue rose 31% to $1.86bn with Las Vegas up 8.5% to $637m, while Wynn Macau and Wynn Palace were up 79% and 59% respectively to a combined $998m. Adj. EBITDA was up 50% to $647m.

• CFO Julie Cameron-Doe noted liquidity remained “very strong” with $4.2bn of cash and undrawn revolver facilities. Leverage remained at just over 4x.

Light show

Train arrive: Light & Wonder’s new game Dragon Train made its much anticipated debut in the US over the quarter, despite the overhang of the IP-related legal action brought by Aristocrat over the similarly themed Dragon Link.

• Noting the game had transferred from the Australian market, CEO Matt Wilson said it would also soon transfer into both social casino and iCasino.

By the numbers: Wilson noted Q1 represented the sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth. Revenue rose 13% to $756m while adj. EBITDA came in also up 13% to $281m.

• In machines, Wilson noted that Light & Wonder’s installed base now represented 49% of the North American market. In Australia, it gained no. 1 ship-share status for the first time.

• The SciPlay unit now claims 11% of the social casino market.

We want to be together: In iCasino, Wilson noted the company continued to see progress, believing its strategy of collaborating with operators would “ultimately solidify long-term partnerships as we scale and expand into other regions in the future.”

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Earnings in brief

Red Rock Resorts: The proof of the pudding for the company’s Durango property came with the Q1 numbers that showed the Las Vegas locals debutant well on its way to fulfilling the company’s return on investment “even faster than planned,” according to CFO Stephen Cootey.

• He admitted, however, that as expected the property had led to some cannibalization of its flagship property.

• By the numbers: Revenues rose 12.7% to $489m with adj. EBITDA up 7.7% to $209m.

Full House Resorts: After producing consensus-missing revenue of $90m and adj. EBITDA of $12.4m, the regionals operator said it was bad weather affecting the reopening of the Chamonix property in Colorado that accounted for the problems. “The rough winter weather that you’ve heard about on everyone else’s earnings call certainly applies to us here,” said CEO Dan Lee.

• “The weekends are our most important part of the week,” he added. “Unfortunately, the winter snow kept falling on weekends.”  

Golden Entertainment: Minus revenues from recent disposals in Maryland and the bulk of its distributed gaming business, the Strat owner saw revenue fall 37% while adj. EBITDA was down a third to $41m. Nevada casino resorts operations were stable at $101m while the local business was down 6% to $39m.

• But despite that, the analysts were somewhat negative. “As it pertains to locals gaming and or lower-end Strip trends, the bloom has been off the rose in Las Vegas for a bit now,” said the team at Deutsche Bank.

Doubledown Interactive: The social gaming to iCasino company generated $8.3m of revenue from the real-money operator SuprNation in the first quarter. Total group revenue rose to $88.1m while adj. EBITDA came in at $31.9m.

Accel: Revenues for the distributed gaming operator rose 3% to $302m while adj. EBITDA was flat at $46.2m. The company, which largely operates in Illinois, said it had delivered a solid quarter despite the bad weather in Q1.

Everi: Revenue came in at $189m, down 5.5%, while adj. EBITDA was down 15% to $80.3m. The team at Jefferies said, although they believed in the “positive merits” of the IGT merger, there was a risk of the company failing to regain its earnings momentum.

Genius Sports: The sports data and adtech provider produced another quarterly beat with revenues at $120m, up 2.5%, while adj. EBITDA came in at $6m. Net losses stood at $26m. Over the quarter, the company saw previous owner Apax reduce its stake in the business. 

• Guidance for the FY24 was raised to $500m of revenue and $82m of adj. EBITDA.

Affiliate earnings in brief

There is no bottom: Gaming affiliate Catena Media troubles appeared to worsen in Q1, as the newly North America-only focused company saw revenues dive by 49% to €16m while adj. EBITDA cratered to just €1.9m. As of close on Wednesday, the shares were down nearly 19% on the week.

• Owning it: Interim CEO Pierre Cadena, who will make way for full-time CEO Manuel Stan in July, admitted to “lackluster execution” as well as adverse Google search engine updates.

• It could have been worse: More worrying, perhaps, was that its “strongest performing” market in Q1 was North Carolina, which only opened in late March.

• But Cadena cautioned the company “cannot rely on state launches to be the only driver of our growth in the upcoming quarters.” 

🤮 Catena Media’s shares endure another tough week

Gigging around

If you don’t ask: Meanwhile, the affiliate arm of Gaming Innovation Group continued to thrive in part due to the success it is enjoying with the AskGamblers business it bought from Catena. The media business, which will officially split from GiG’s platform business later this month, saw revenue rise 52% to €28m while adj. EBITDA rose 8% to €12.6m.

• The platform business saw revenues decline by 17% to €8.3m.

Calendar

• May 9: Bragg Gaming, AGS

• May 14: Flutter

• May 15: Sportradar, Aristocrat

• May 16: Gambling.com

• Ma7 17: XLMedia

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