ZEAL Network SE (TIMA) Earnings Call Transcript

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the ZEAL Network SE following the publication of the Q3 figures of 2025. I am delighted to welcome the CEO, Dr. Stefan Tweraser; and the CFO, Andrea Behrendt, who will guide us through the presentation and the results. [Operator Instructions]. So having said this, Andrea, the stage is yours.

Thanks a lot, and good morning, everybody. So welcome to our earnings call for Q3 this morning for ZEAL Network. I hope you have the presentation. If not, please have a look on our Investor Relations section on our homepage there, everything is available. So before we start, I really want to welcome Stefan. Stefan, your first earnings call with us. So I'm happy you're joining us today, and I'm looking forward to build the future together with you. So let's go to the content. The agenda of today's call. We will start with a brief overview on the highlights of the first 9 months. Then let's dive into the financials. That's what we are here for to talk about and then have a look on the strategic focus and talk about our updated guidance 2025. And then we will wrap it up with the key takeaways and go to our Q&A session. And with that, for the first time, handing over to Stefan for a short summary.

Andrea, thank you very much, and good morning, everyone, also from my side. I'm obviously super excited to be here. I've joined ZEAL now a bit more than 2 months ago, and it has been a blast. I really enjoy being here and obviously enjoy attending this call with you to update you on our financials. The headline that we want to communicate is that we continue to execute our strategy very consistently and very successfully. As you all know, a major driver of our business is the jackpot environment, and Andrea will deep dive into this. The jackpot environment that we've been able to witness in the first 3 quarters of this year has been below the statistical average. But despite this not so welcoming environment, we've been able to really drive our business very successfully. We have accelerated the growth of our customer base. We have been able to continue to significantly increase the gross margin of our business and thus also have grown the profitability of ZEAL Network SE as a consequence, and you noticed, we have been able to adjust our ambitious targets upwards and have increased our guidance in September 2025. But back to Andrea for all the details.

Thanks, Stefan. Yes, let's go through the details of the financials. On Slide #6, you will get the jackpot environment. Like you know, it's really important to put our results into context from the jackpot side. The jackpot is an upside potential that if it comes, we have the option to acquire even more new customers and reactivate existing ones. So it's a real driver. But in the first 9 months of 2025, it was unfortunately a weak jackpot situation, but we delivered strong results with that. We saw only 4 peaks in the 9 months this year, while last year, for example, we had 6 peaks already by end of Q3. And as you all know, Q4 was a blast last year. Like I said, despite this situation, we delivered strong results, and let's see how that translates into financials on Slide #7. Here, I want to highlight 3 numbers for you. So let's talk about revenues. The revenues grew by 34%, and that's driven by an increased billings of 12% year-over-year and a notable improvement of the margin, as we know, based on the price increase that happened last year. We increased also our marketing spend by 35%, investing into future growth of ZEAL and acquired a significant number of new customers in such a weak jackpot environment. And bottom line, we delivered a strong EBITDA of EUR 54 million, and we really are maintaining this momentum of efficient growth, what is really matter for us. Let's take a closer look on the billings, Slide #8. We grow our billings 12% year-over-year. This is based on an increased customer base of 17%. That is based on Q4 strong acquisition from last year, but also the new FT&Ps or leads that we acquired this year. And so we reached over 1.5 million monthly active users this year on our platform, and they spent around EUR 59 per month, a really strong number. Previously, I already mentioned that our margin increased. And the key driver here is really the successful price increase from last year. And on the other hand, what we are really actively working on steadily improving our product market mix. And herefore, we ended up with an overall gross margin of 17.5%. So the other side of the growth for ZEAL is the customer acquisition, and you see that on Slide 10. We acquired in the first 9 months, 879,000 new customers. This is a clear sign of effective marketing also in weak jackpot environments. And we are really able to grow our customer base also in these situations. And that's a real -- also a strategic goal for us, as you know. This overall led to a CPL of EUR 46.5. And this was, of course, an expected increase compared to last year because of the weak jackpot environment, but also because of overall increased media prices and the investments that we are doing in the new businesses to really test new target audiences and widen our market. The CPL for the core brokerage business was actually at 42.5% on levels as expected. On our other side of the business, the games business, we are seeing continuous growth and improved traction. So we increased our games portfolio up to nearly 600 games and see how the product features really resonate with our customers. So overall, the business grew by 51% year-over-year on the revenue side. And now last but not least, to our Traumhausverlosung. We already have done 4 draws this year with our -- or have planned our 4 draws this year for the house raffles. In this slide, you will see the performance of the first 4 houses for Traumhausverlosung. And we also, this time, added the overall duration of the campaign to give you even a bit more context for the numbers. And as you see, the House 4, our house in Sankt Peter-Ording was a success. It was higher than all our expectations and even previous performances. So really a strong delivery here. And we are delighted to announce that we are already on our fifth house. So we have a beautiful house that you see there on the picture in Bavaria that you are able to win until Monday. So maybe you want to still buy a ticket and get your chance on it. It's so far my favorite house. But then we are looking already on the next house campaign. And here, we choose the favorite holiday destination for the Germans. It's in Majorca. So we are really waiting for this one to go and yes, go live. And with this, let's give an update on our strategic focus areas and our guidance. On Slide 14, you will see the 3 focus areas that I presented to you already in March and that I'm always updating you on because they are so important to us. So firstly, we continue to improve our customer acquisition and profitability in our core brokerage business. And you have seen in the first 9 months, our underlying gross margin is at 17.5%. That's a really strong number. And we already improved our customer acquisition in this weak jackpot environment. The second focus area, Traumhausverlosung, we are scaling Traumhausverlosung, and as you see, the numbers are running well. And we delivered already the fourth house campaign and all of them actually exceed our expectations. And on Games, we also delivered what we told you. We are currently on track to deliver over EUR 14 million in revenues and will -- we saw year-to-date so far a year-over-year growth of 51%. And on the guidance, you know that we already increased our ambitious guidance for this year. And thanks to the increased lottery gross margin and also the positive development of Traumhausverlosung, we communicated to you an increase. And now we expect revenues for 2025 to be in the range of EUR 205 million to EUR 215 million and EBITDA is expected to be in the range of EUR 63 million to EUR 68 million. And now over to Stefan again for the key takeaways. And after that, we will head to the Q&A session.

Thank you, Andrea. And as you can see, everyone on the call, it has obviously been a great environment for me to start because we've been able to accelerate the growth of our customer base. We have added about 880,000 first-time paying customers and have been able to motivate more than 1.5 million people to be active on our sites on a monthly basis. We have increased our gross margin to remarkable 17.5%, driven by both price measures as well as product mix improvements and that overall led to a very profitable business. The strength of our business led to an increase in the profitability and thus an increase in the guidance that we've been able to give to the markets. This concludes our presentation. And obviously, we are now happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Yes. Thank you very much for the dive into your third quarter, and congratulations on your results. Stefan and Andrea. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now move on to the Q&A session and are happy to take your questions in person via audio line. [Operator Instructions] We will start with the questions from Henry Wendisch. You should be able to speak now?

Yes. Welcome, Stefan. I have a couple of questions. First one, I think, is regarding the recently upgraded guidance. I think on sales, I totally agree with your new guidance. But on EBITDA, now that we have seen the Q3 results, you're implying EUR 9 million to EUR 14 million of Q4 EBITDA, and this seems rather weak in my view. So do you also agree that this is a rather conservative estimate? Or are you expecting any sort of jump costs that are not foreseen by us in that sense? And then, I think, shall we do all at once or one by one?

We can do one by one, Henry. So let's start with the guidance one. So yes, I mean, we had strong Q3 results. You have seen that. I agree with you that we will most likely end up at the upper end of the guidance. So you're not seeing anything wrong. But of course, also in Q4, we want to grow and invest into efficient marketing, and we are searching for these opportunities all the way. So that's just like giving us with the guidance a little bit of breathing room.

Okay. Understood. Next one is regarding the user activity, just on the Q3 level, I've seen a large jump in activity, and it was bigger than I expected actually. I wanted to maybe get a bit more color on how this happened. I mean we've seen 2 peak jackpots in Q3, which might be a result or actually probably a big result. But is it also maybe that there is a recovery of the strong cohort that you acquired in Q4 that is sort of -- they played quite well in Q4 and then Q1, Q2, the activity went down and now it went up again because they sort of gained trust with you and they sort of also returned to a higher player frequency as they got to know your offering and how it works at ZEAL and the activity is going up. So is it a mix of both? Or what's the real answer here?

Yes. I think you're kind of right, but it's not only the Q4 2024 cohort, but it's actually basically all cohorts really got well activated in this Q3 with the 2 peak jackpots. We saw a lot of activity there. And on top of that, really also the Dream House Raffles is really driving activity on the platform in the existing customer base, but also bringing in new customers. So that's the 2 main reasons that we can mention here.

Right. And then on the gross margin improvement, we've seen the 2.2% in price optimization on a 9-month basis, but now Q3 is the first quarter without this base effect sort of. So does that mean that there was no price effect in Q3 and then the increase in gross margin in lottery was only driven by the mix effect.

Exactly. If you compare Q3 to previous year, you have now a clean gross margin comparison. So there is no additional price increase, no relevant price increase topics there. What you see is mainly really the hard work in optimizing our product mix, getting our customers focusing on premium products and therefore, increasing the overall gross margin.

Good. Got it. Understood. Next question is regarding the user intake. I think it was the second largest user intake we've seen following, I think, Q4 2024, which was the biggest. And that with "only 2 big jackpots." So is there anything, I mean, beyond marketing efficiency gains that has driven this strong intake? I mean, obviously, there's a Traumhausverlosung effect in that because a lot of people signed up for that as well, but are we missing anything?

No, exactly. I mean there are 2 points. So the one point, Traumhausverlosung, exactly. So we really see that this is a product that works very, very well in customer acquisition. So it drives customers into our platform. On top of that, we really worked hard on optimizing our marketing playbook in certain jackpot environments so that we are not only able to harvest a lot of new customers during peak jackpots, but also in lower jackpot phases. So I think that's, yes, a combined success of both measurements that the team is driving.

Great. And then I can jump over to Dream House. It was quite a big, and I was surprised positively by the demand there regarding especially average billing per user, and if my math is correct, also the average revenue, which developed proportionately. Is there any -- besides the big demand, any effect that maybe played a role that pushed this average billing per user figure higher than the previous draws?

I think we -- also on top of the normal demand increase, like you already mentioned it, we pushed the product with different price points into our existing customer base, and that increased the average billings per user here.

Right. Cool. And then my last question also regarding the Traumhausverlosung Dream House raffle. We've seen in the last, I think, 2 or 3 quarters that Omaze sort of your small investment from the U.K., they -- what you copied from them to U.K., now they copied you in Germany, and they have quite, I think, very, very similar offering, and it looks almost the same. So what's your sort of your assessment on this? How are they performing against you? And do you see this as a threat maybe? Or what's sort of your take?

No. First of all, like I always said, I get a lot of this question, we were welcoming competition, and it's good competition. Especially we see that Omaze helps us actually with their investments into this product category to make this really a relevant product category in Germany because the marketing pressure that comes in now from 2 providers helps really to make this known product concept in Germany. So it's not a threat. We are happy to see that it also works for them. As you know, we are also invested in Omaze and no negative impact there.

Okay. But you're also not teaming up in any sense, but this is -- so vice versa spillover effects, but not like you have a joint effort.

No, no. I mean we are competitors.

Thank you for your questions, Henry. And we will move on to Tim Kruse in a moment. [Operator Instructions].

Yes, a lot of questions already asked by Henry, but a few follow-ons. Can you confirm that the lottery margin, even if my calculations, excluding the Dream House raffle, the core lottery margin was very, very strong in Q3. So is that something from a mix effect that we should look at in the next quarters as well?

I mean we told you already that we are on a high gross margin and that we see this sustainable, although Q3 is, of course, a special effect because you have 2 peak jackpots and you had -- this drives, of course, especially sales on the lottery clubs that has a significantly increased margin compared to the core brokerage business. So you need to adjust it a little bit down, but not like massively.

Yes. Okay. Okay. Understood. And then on marketing, that was significantly above last year and also the first 2 quarters, you said that you will be planning to increase marketing. Can you maybe split that a bit? Was that a lot coming from the Dream House raffle? And what is sort of the expectation for Q4, maybe just sort of a similar or slightly lower level? That would be helpful.

Yes. On the marketing side, it has 2 effects. So of course, we are trying, like I said, also in weak jackpot situations, to acquire new customers in our core brokerage business. And therefore, you see that this worked out, and we were able to efficiently acquire. And on the other hand, you're right, of course, the acquisition of Dream House raffle works very well, and we are investing relevant amounts there as well to grab as much of the market as possible as fast and efficient as possible.

Maybe a follow-up on the Dream House. Can you give us a bit of guidance in terms of the number of houses? I mean you are still at a quite similar pace in terms of days or duration between the periods. What are your expectations looking into next year in terms of the number of houses you will be expecting to raffle?

Our idea is to increase the frequency clearly because the demand is there, and it's a really well-known product. So this year, we were able to deliver at the end 4.5 houses, let's say. The draw of the last house will be beginning of next year. So you can, for sure, add a few houses on top of that for next year.

Okay. Perfect. And then maybe finally, personnel costs in Q3 were quite a bit higher also than the previous quarters. Were there any one-offs we have to look at? Or is there any sort of volume-related, yes, personnel costs there? Or is that a level which we should look at sort of for the next quarters as well?