Genius Sports Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
March 4, 2025

There are 14 speakers on the call.

Operator

you for standing by. My name is Karen and I will be the conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Genius Sports Fourth Quarter twenty twenty four Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. I will now turn the call over to Geniusports.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you and good morning. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward looking statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20 F filed with the SEC on 03/15/2024. During the call, management will also discuss certain non GAAP measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating Genius' operating performance.

Speaker 1

These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for Genius' financial results prepared in accordance with U. S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non GAAP measures to the direct most directly comparable U. S.

Speaker 1

GAAP measures is available in our earnings release and earnings presentation, which can be found on our website at investors.geniusports.com. With that, I'll now turn the call to our CEO, Mark Law.

Speaker 2

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today as we conclude another successful year across the business. Over the course of 2024, we've carried out many strategic, commercial and financial objectives to deliver a great year for our business and position ourselves for continued structural and sustainable growth. The results of these objectives are now clear in our latest set of financials and in our guidance for 2025. To quickly recap, we reported year on year group revenue growth of 38% in Q4 to $176,000,000 This brings our full year group revenue to $511,000,000 representing a 24% growth in the year, right in line with our increased guidance and well ahead of the $480,000,000 we guided to at this time last year. Our group adjusted EBITDA increased by over 2.5x year on year to $32,000,000 in Q4, bringing our full year EBITDA to $86,000,000 also in line with our guidance and also well above our expectations at the start of the year.

Speaker 2

This translated to 900 basis points of margin expansion in Q4 and three ninety basis points for the full year. Importantly, we have also reported our first year of positive net cash flow, just as we communicated we would throughout the year. We generated $82,000,000 of operating cash flow in 2024, increasing more than five times from just $15,000,000 in 2023. This amounted to a year end net cash balance of $135,000,000 a $9,000,000 increase year on year. This marks a critical inflection point as we expect to increase our annual cash flows each year going forwards.

Speaker 2

By this point, I hope we have demonstrated a clear operating leverage that exists in our business model, which we will continue to benefit from in the years ahead. This momentum should continue in 2025 as we expect to deliver June in group revenue and $125,000,000 in group EBITDA. This represents yet another year of 20% plus top line growth, margin expansion to 20% and increasingly positive cash flow. Further to this, we believe our balance sheet strength will be the key to unlocking the next phase of growth and profitability for our business. We sit here today with a strong balance sheet and a predictable cash generative business model that affords us the flexibility to allocate capital in a prudent manner to support additional growth and scale.

Speaker 2

For instance, much of the $82,000,000 in operating cash flow this year was reinvested in our continued rollout of Dragon and our next generation computer vision, AI and machine learning technology platform. This tech is capturing next generation data, which enables our new innovative products that creates value for our partners across the entire source ecosystem. This technology platform and set of products are extremely difficult

Speaker 3

to

Speaker 2

replicate, thus widening our moat and strengthening our competitive differentiation. Now that we have reached this cash flow inflection point, we expect to have more capital to put to work to further solidify our position and execute on this strategy. We expect to maintain our current pace of discretionary investment in technology and product development, while also having greater flexibility for potential M and A to further support this strategy. As Genius is achieving greater scale, the broader sports technology industry is becoming more fragmented. As a result, we are seeing many high quality, yet subscale technology companies come under pressure.

Speaker 2

App Genius is a large, scaled business touching so many parts of the ecosystem. Leads and teams, betting operators, sponsors and advertisers, and broadcasters and content distributors all on a global basis, we believe we are well positioned as a natural consolidator of businesses that provide back end mission critical technology and can further support our strategy to widen our mode and differentiate our product set. To be absolutely clear, we will be opportunistic about any potential M and A and maintain very tight guardrails. There are no gaps in our business model or technology, so we'll remain disciplined and focused on generating high ROI for all shareholders, meaning we will only consider opportunities that are margin and cash accretive and aligned with our strategic objectives. Additionally, we believe the underlying business is on a clear path to organically achieve our long term EBITDA margin of at least 30%.

Speaker 2

In fact, we believe that any potential M and A may even help us reach that long term target in a quicker timeframe. We're excited about this next phase of our journey and the opportunity to become an even stronger and more profitable business than we already are. Additionally, we have built a high powered team of people to lead us through this next phase of our journey, including new senior hires in New York as we have previously announced, and I anticipate that this will continue as the gravitational center of the business will continue to move from London to New York as The U. S. Becomes an increasingly important part of the business.

Speaker 2

And while the opportunities ahead of us are exciting, in the meantime, we are very happy with how the business is performing today. To begin, the biggest contributor to our growth in profitability and cash flow in the quarter was the betting business. As you know, our betting revenue has multiple levers of growth, including growth of total betting volume, new customers in new markets, growth of in play betting, improvement in operator win margins, price increases and cross sell of additional content and services as part of our contract renewals and renegotiations. Despite the pressure on bookmakers win margin that we've seen this NFL season, our results were still exactly in line with our guidance, and we believe that this is a good opportunity to remind you of our differentiated resilient business model. Of course, we always prefer better game outcomes for bookmakers.

Speaker 2

However, given our unique position, we are far less exposed to any volatility in bookmaker performance and not overly reliant on weekly or monthly win margins since we benefit from several other growth drivers. For instance, we continue to see strong momentum of in play, which represented 30% of the total NFL betting volume in the quarter. Growth of in play remains an important revenue driver for us given that we earn a premium share of each of the in play revenues versus pre match revenues. This combined with higher overall pricing in our recent contract renegotiations led to betting revenue of growth of 48% year on year, making it our strongest quarter of growth since Q4 twenty twenty one. In The U.

Speaker 2

S. Specifically, our total revenue increased 51% year on year, primarily due to our successful contract renewals with every major sportsbook in The U. S. Our results from this quarter prove our ability to outpace the growth of the broader market and doing so with less downside risk relative to other participants in the sports betting industry. We hope this also demonstrates our commercial capabilities, considering our success through a heavy contract renewal cycle with every major sportsbook customer in The U.

Speaker 2

S. On Slide eight, you'll see how this resulted in a strong dollar based net revenue retention for the year. As you can see, our 2024 net revenue retention was 146% for our top 25 global customers, highlighting the growth we continue to achieve even in the most mature markets. This growth is even more pronounced among our top 10 U. S.

Speaker 2

Customers, where net revenue retention was 163% in 2024. So while we cannot disclose exact pricing terms on each individual contract, we believe this is a helpful metric to measure and share the success of our latest renewal cycle, of course, in addition to the strong financial results from the quarter. We believe these contract renewals offer us frequent opportunities to provide new value add products and services to help sports enhance their offerings to consumers, especially as we have developed exciting new products to drive more engagement. This is exactly how we have achieved strong net revenue retention historically and how we expect to sustain that success going forward. One of the most exciting new products that has proven to drive engagement is BetVision, which brings me to Slide nine.

Speaker 2

As a reminder, BetVision is a highly engaging interface where users can find low latency streams of NFL games with fully interactive betting and viewing experiences all integrated into the video player. This is a one of a kind watch and bet experience and also a key driver of in play betting, making it a valuable fan engagement and monetization tool for bookmakers. Importantly, we are continuing to enhance the features and functionality to make BetVision unique and further differentiated. For instance, this year's Super Bowl featured a touch to bet functionality with a few of our sportsbook customers. This new feature allows users to actually touch on a player directly from the video stream to access that player's statistics and betting markets.

Speaker 2

From there, users could seamlessly place a bet on that player, all within the BetVision interface while still watching the live stream. This was an important milestone in our product development and adds a new layer to the BetVision experience. The distribution and product innovation has led to another successful year for BetVision, and we are encouraged by the results from its second full season. First, the product has gone global as we have streamed NFL games via BetVision in 13 different countries. More importantly, we continue to see significant growth in overall viewership.

Speaker 2

First, the weekly average number of unique streams this season has more than doubled compared to last season. We have also seen increased viewership within the most recent NFL season. From the first half of the season to the second half, we have seen weekly average numbers of unique streams increase by 33%, and the weekly average number of unique devices increased by 19%, indicating strong product adoption through the season. This implies not just an increase in the total number of users, but also suggests that users are increasingly accessing multiple unique NFL streams. And lastly, in play betting represented 76% of the total handle through BetVision platform, which compares favorably to the roughly 30% mix across all NFL wagering this season.

Speaker 2

To put it simply, BetVision is gaining significant momentum. The level of user engagement and interactivity is extremely valuable to every partner that we serve, Sportsbooks, of course, but the leagues who want to deliver the content in new and exciting ways, as well as the advertisers who want to find captive audiences during moments of live sporting event. So you can appreciate how BetVision is becoming the platform that ties together our most important strategic objectives and

Speaker 4

one of

Speaker 2

the ways we benefit from touching so many parts of the sports technology ecosystem we outlined earlier. Thanks to the success of BetVision for the NFL, we are now expanding this product to other sports across the globe. We aim to launch BetVision for international sports like soccer, which is expected in Q2 of this year, and basketball, expected in Q3. This product expansion represents another key milestone as we aim to make BetVision ubiquitous and look forward to sharing more exciting updates soon. BetVision is obviously an exciting opportunity, and we're still in the early stages of the development and distribution.

Speaker 2

However, our tech distribution stems well beyond the scope of betting alone, and we approach our league relationships much more holistically. We are leveraging our technology to provide solutions for some of the biggest challenges that the leagues face. For instance, by utilizing our proprietary computer vision, machine learning, and AI technology, we're empowering alternate telecast of live sporting events, semi automated officiating, coaching insights platforms, vet vision, and much more, all built on Genius IQ, a single data capture system enabling a wide range of products. As always, the use of this technology is not something we're just talking about, but actually something we're executing. See Slide 10 for a few exciting examples from this quarter alone, including the EA Sports Madden cast on Peacock, the NBA two ks Datacast on truTV in Max, Premier League datacast or the augmented telecast of the German Cup match with Sky Deutschland.

Speaker 2

And we've already kicked off our new year with even more executions built on Genius IQ. For instance, just last week, our technology was used to automate offside decisions for the fifth round of the FA Cup, marking an extension of our existing technology partnership with UK football. This is a landmark moment for Genius Sports, developing a cutting edge system that combines mesh tracking, three d renders, and Genius IQ to power automated offsites for the biggest league in the world, soccer. Additionally, we delivered an augmented data driven broadcast for key matchups in Lithuania basketball last month, which featured dynamic ad placements on behalf of a local consumer brand. We consistently communicated this as a logical next step to broadcast augmentation, and I'm happy to share that we are now executing exactly on that plan we outlined just a couple of years ago, and we believe there is much more to come as this technology becomes the new standard.

Speaker 2

The wide scale distribution of this technology remains core to our strategy and our mission to be the must have digital technology partner for all leagues, sports content distributors, sportsbooks and brands. 2024 marks another successful years of executing that mission, and we're excited to be continuing with that journey in 2025. With that, I'll now turn the call to Nick to discuss how this execution has translated to 2024 financial results and to our 2025 forecast.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Mark. As mentioned, the product development and commercial execution contributed meaningfully to our results in Q4 and the full year, leading to well balanced revenue growth across all three product groups. To start, our betting revenue increased 48% year on year in Q4, primarily driven by the immediate impact from the sportsbook contract renewals, which Mark covered earlier. Betting revenue represented nearly threefour of our group revenue in the quarter, making this a significant contributor to the 38% revenue growth at the group level. It is also worth noting that nearly half of our Q4 group revenue came from The U.

Speaker 3

S, also highlighting the impact from the recent contract renewal cycle with our U. S. Customers. Importantly, the composition of our U. S.

Speaker 3

Sportsbook contracts is now more of a balanced blend between revenue share and contractually fixed minimums. Therefore, from an accounting standpoint, much of our U. S. Betting revenue derived from these contractual minimums will now be recognized as fixed revenue as opposed to revenue from variable consideration, which you will see in our 20 F filing next week. That said, we will continue to realize revenue upside through revenue share agreements, but have reduced our downside risk through contractually fixed minimums, which have been proven during the unprecedented NFL season.

Speaker 3

Despite today's focus on The U. S, we've also renewed several sportsbook customers outside of The U. S. As well, which has driven European revenue growth of 26% year on year in the quarter. The commercial success with our sportsbook customers across the globe brought our full year global betting revenue to $355,000,000 up 29 in the year.

Speaker 3

Moving on to Media. Our revenue has now surpassed $100,000,000 marking an important milestone for the business, which was generating less than $50,000,000 only three years ago. With our media revenue up 15% for the year, this product has delivered double digit revenue growth in every year of our reported history. Lastly, our sports revenue increased 47% year on year in Q4, primarily driven by the monetization of products built on Genius IQ technology, as Mark highlighted in his closing remarks. The global distribution of this technology is strategically important.

Speaker 3

And in the meantime, it has also driven meaningful revenue growth as we have sold products like semi automated offsites, broadcast augmentations and other playing tracking solutions this quarter to many leagues and federations across the globe. This accumulated to 24% group revenue growth in 2024 to $511,000,000 marking our fourth consecutive year as a public company delivering at least 20% revenue growth and equating to a 25% CAGR in that period. And while our group revenue was driven by each of our three product groups this year, It was also well diversified from a regional perspective as well as we delivered double digit revenue growth in each of our three reported geographical markets this year. First, our European revenue, the largest component, increased by 15% this year. Our next largest geographic market, The Americas, increased revenue by 33%, followed by rest of the world increasing 44%.

Speaker 3

Again, while much of the focus today is on The U. S, it is worth highlighting that we are seeing strong, well balanced revenue growth on a global basis. Importantly, this revenue growth and the relatively fixed and predictable cost base has resulted in consistent margin expansion as we continue to prove the operating leverage in the business model. As you will see on the slide, we delivered 900 basis points of year on year adjusted group EBITDA margin expansion in Q4 and March basis points of margin expansion for the full year, bringing our twenty twenty four group adjusted EBITDA margin to 16.8%. Additionally, this operating leverage is evident in our year on year gross margin expansion as well.

Speaker 3

Our gross margin increased from 16.7% in the full year 2023 to 25.2% in 2024, now marking our highest annual gross margin since our public listing. 2024 also marked our first year of generating positive cash flow, another important milestone for the business. Given the improving underlying profitability as well as our clean capital structure with no debt and stable pace of capitalized investment, we generated $9,000,000 of positive cash flow

Speaker 2

in the full

Speaker 3

year. This inflection point was underscored by our operating cash flow of $82,000,000 in the year, up from just $15,000,000 in the full year 2023. We believe this reflects the improving fundamentals of our underlying business and further demonstrates the cash flow potential as we continue to scale. This increasing cash flow allows us to sustainably reinvest in the business to continue developing products that are empowering our partners to stay ahead in the evolving landscape of tech and fan engagement. These products are built on differentiated technology that is extremely difficult for others to replicate, ultimately widening our competitive moat whilst also unlocking new revenue opportunities.

Speaker 3

To conclude, we believe the positive trends across the industry, along with our unique technology capabilities, product development and commercial execution, sets the foundation for another year of growth in profitability and cash flow in 2025. We expect to generate group revenue of $620,000,000 representing another year of growth above 20%. Additionally, we expect group adjusted EBITDA of $125,000,000 representing a 46% year on year increase and three forty basis points of margin expansion to 20%. We also expect to increase our annual cash flow in 2025. We're entering 2025 with strong momentum, high predictability and a set of technology driven solutions that continue to improve and create value for our partners across the entire sports ecosystem.

Speaker 3

So we're excited for the opportunity still ahead. With that, we conclude our prepared remarks and open the line to Q and A.

Operator

The first question comes from Jed Kelly from Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Hey, great. Thanks for taking my questions and Zike's job. Just first, just looking at the media tech or the sports technology services line, really nice acceleration and then you talked about the products. Just as we're thinking about this into like 2025 and 2026, should we expect some similar growth? And can you just talk about the visibility in that revenue line item relative to your other two segments?

Speaker 4

Then I have a follow-up.

Speaker 3

Hey, Jed, it's Nick. Yes, I mean, we've always talked about Sport Tech really being an enabler to the rest of the business. And I'll let Mark talk about that a little more in a second. I mean, in terms of the sort of brass tacks for numbers, we've obviously announced a number of specific deals with European Soccer Leagues and SOAP, which is coming through there nicely. And I'm expecting that to continue to grow through 2025 and 2026.

Speaker 3

But the really exciting aspect of that is not really the specific numbers that drives but the strategic importance

Speaker 5

of that. Yes, it's one of these things that's quite complicated because, the sports tech that we're rolling out, you know, the the the underlying technology such as, you know, the stuff that's coming from SAOT, the the Dragon rollout, and how how will how will the augmentations being translated in things like Maddencast and, you know, the NBA two ks work. It really is it it it sort of it all pulls together to give us a platform for an acceleration in, in a lot of the media business as well. So it gives us the inventory that we want. And whilst we're being super conservative as we always are in terms of forecasting that, we see huge growth opportunities.

Speaker 5

And I think the key thing that we've learned in the last few months from the actual delivery of Madden cars, the delivery of VetVision, the delivery of the two ks is how well those products are received in the market, the adoption rates, not only the consumers but also the businesses that we're providing them to are super happy with them. And so our focus is about getting that distribution as widely done as possible and using that as a platform for media growth whilst obviously being reasonably conservative about that in the way that we're forecasting.

Speaker 4

Got it. And then just my follow-up, you highlighted Europe in your prepared remarks. There is talk of the NFL, they do move to an 18 game schedule. You're likely going to see a lot more year gains over in London. Are you starting to see a benefit of the of more people betting the NFL?

Speaker 4

And can you just talk about what European expansion or the NFL bringing more games into Europe? How you stand to benefit? Thanks.

Speaker 5

Yes. Look, the NFL is super exciting in Europe. You know, it's it's being picked up. You know, you've seen the stuff in Germany. I think I think, it was, Paddy Power, part of the Flutter Group that that that had it down as the fourth the fourth biggest sport, that that that they offered.

Speaker 5

So, you know, you're seeing real traction with the NFL. The NFL has put a lot of time, effort, money, and I think they're getting really good results from, you know, really focusing, Europeans' attention to it. The games are, you know, really oversubscribed when you actually go there and the and the hype, you know, I've been I've been to the NFL games in in in Europe and, you know, the hype there is is is big. So, yeah, I I we're pretty excited by that. Obviously, the the product sets, you know, again, bringing it back to the product sets, bringing it back to that that vision, you know, these product sets are really, key to, you know, our our growth and and and they're sort of very well positioned for for not only things like the NFL, but other sports.

Speaker 5

You know, as I said, we're rolling out soccer in q two, basketball in q three, in bet vision and all of this stuff is coming together in a really strong way.

Operator

The next question comes from Bernie MacKernan from Natam. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe just to start, and I know we've been kind of spoiled in the past with the amount of guidance that we get from you guys, especially on a by segment and quarterly basis. But any puts and takes that we should be thinking about throughout the year in terms of seasonality would be the first question.

Speaker 3

Hey, Bernie, you're quite right. Spoiled is the word out here, Bernie. I'm expecting growth throughout the year really. And I think it's been particularly strong in the first half of the year, I think, coming from betting as we're comping against the old contracts, as you know, back in 2024. I think as I look through the year, it's probably harder to replicate the 48% growth we've just delivered in bedding in Q4, but I'm still expecting strong growth in the back half of the year.

Speaker 3

I think for the media, it's probably the reverse. I'm expecting stronger growth in Q4 and Q3 in 2025. What I'd also say, Bernie, is that although it's early and I'm not going to guide to 2026 now, I think our initial view is that we anticipate to continue both that strong revenue growth and the continued margin expansion that we've seen in 2024, '20 '20 '5 through 2026 and beyond as well.

Speaker 6

Understood. And then I know a couple of years back, we went through a lot in terms of like FX impact and constant currency growth. Just any thoughts in terms of how FX is impacting the current guidance?

Speaker 3

Yes. I mean, as you know, Bernie, I hate talking about FX. For 2024, I mean, the numbers are highly immaterial in relation to FX. For 2025, we've guided on based on what the current FX rates. And so again, I'm not expecting there to be any particular impact through 2025 and beyond.

Operator

The next question comes from Ben Miller from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Speaker 7

Great. Thanks so much for taking the questions. Mark, with 2025 setting up to be a cleaner year with the league and sportsbook negotiations now more behind you, I'm curious to hear more on your priorities as a management team this year and what specific areas of the business you're most focused on in 2025, whether that's from a product or broader capital allocation perspective?

Speaker 5

Yes. That's a great question, actually, and something we're heavily focused on. So I think that falls into a few different areas. I mean, from a a we spent the last part of 2024 bringing in a fairly new and refreshed senior management team. So we brought in a new CTO, Mark Croft, who was the tech director in the CTO office at Google.

Speaker 5

We brought in a new chief people officer from Amazon. And we've spent a lot of time making sure that they're well bedded into the business and they're adding a lot of value. So there's been a lot of focus on some of the operational execution in terms of getting the management team in a really good place for growth. As you know, 2024 was a good year for contracts and a good year for negotiations, but it was also a very good year for product. And, you know, delivery towards the end of the year on product was was a big focus for us.

Speaker 5

We've got those products out the door. They're performing extremely well. You know, everything from SAOT, you know, the update and the rollout of Dragon, things like the Madden cast we've already mentioned and the and the the NBA two ks, and of course, FanHub, the platform. So all of those products have successful rollouts, and the business is very focused on that. We said in the prepared remarks that we're focusing on a shift in the business in terms of the sort of center of gravity to New York.

Speaker 5

That's going particularly well. I mean, minor things like we're moving offices in in New York to, to a more appropriate place. We've we've implemented a return to office policy across the group, and, you know, we we we're in a place where we're really focused on on the, I guess, the nitty gritty execution of the business. It's been a really big focus for us. And as part of that, we expect to see a lot of more rapid product delivery.

Speaker 5

As I think we've already mentioned, we've got the delivery of soccer in that vision coming out in Q2 and basketball in Q3. That's quite a big lift for us. There's a lot of delivery there because there's obviously a lot of games. And we expect that to have a very positive impact on the business from a revenue point of view, although we're being extremely cautious about forecasting now in the media line. So I think that it's really a case of getting our heads down, making sure that we're executing well, that the management team is well placed and that we're really providing ourselves with a platform for growth.

Speaker 5

I feel very good about the business. So we sort of feel like a coiled spring really. And we're in a good place. We've got strong numbers. We've got good contracts.

Speaker 5

We've got a lot of visibility. And we've been very conservative about parts of our guide as well. So we feel like we've got a real opportunity to have a really strong year in 2025.

Speaker 7

Great. And then maybe just talk more about the capital raise and how you think that positions you against some of the key objectives that you laid out. And when we think about potential types of M and A you're looking at, how transformational as it relates to net new business lines versus tuck ins to augment existing lines should we expect?

Speaker 5

Yes, another good question. I mean, look, you raise money when you don't need it, right? So we've got a very strong balance sheet, puts us in a very good position. We're seeing a lot of interesting tuck in acquisitions, opportunistic deals. We're going to be super disciplined about it.

Speaker 5

It's got to be cash accretive. It's got to be businesses that really accelerate our long term vision. We don't need to do acquisitions for the sake of it, but we are seeing more and more opportunities in the market as things become more difficult. We've looked at some of the kind of bigger deals out there, but to be honest with you, fairly unattractive. We don't really be pushing our data rights lines up without any real benefit for that.

Speaker 5

There doesn't seem to be a lot of sense in that. You know, we don't need to be, you know, pushing some of those, some of the costs into the business in the way that maybe those deals are, so we pass on them pass on a bunch of that stuff. So really, we're in a place where we're thinking, okay, long term, let's tuck in some acquisitions, let's make sure they're cash accretive, let's make sure that they're in line with our long term strategy and get our heads down and just deliver. And again, we're well placed to do that. People know we're shopping and we're in a strong place to be competitive in those markets when we want to.

Operator

The next question comes from Jason Bazinet from Citi. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Can I also just ask one question on M and A? When you say, you have balance sheet capacity to unlock the next leg of growth, is that just referring to the robust cash balance that you have or you might potentially lever up? That's the first question. And then the third one is when you say the sorry? Yes, the cash.

Speaker 8

Okay, got it. And then when you say any deal you do would be accretive to margins and cash, is that sort of a one year forward commentary or it could take a couple of years for it to be accretive?

Speaker 5

The ideal and the focus is to make it immediately cash accretive. I mean, that's the deal that we want. Look, we're in a good position. We don't need to do anything. We don't need to do any deals.

Speaker 5

We've got very strong technology stack. We've got a ton of new products. I won't go through it again. So, you know, there are you know, the the industry is changing as, you know, you'll have seen it. There are some businesses that are struggling.

Speaker 5

Some of them are, you know, not frankly, not very attractive. Others are are are more attractive. And, you know, the prices of some of those businesses are coming to a point where actually you're thinking they could be additive to us at the right price and we're well positioned. So that's really our focus.

Speaker 8

That makes sense. Thank you.

Operator

The next question comes from Ryan Sigdul from Craig Hallum Capital Group. Your line is open.

Speaker 9

Hey, good day guys. Looking at your dollar based net retention, which is a very helpful graphic, it's very strong overall, but even stronger in the top 25, even stronger in the top 10 U. S. Customers, which I think may be surprising to many because Genie appears to have increasing leverage with the biggest operators versus getting squeezed by them, which is the perception from an industry standpoint for some. So I guess my overall question is, I guess, how much of that is the increased price?

Speaker 9

How much of that is higher take rate versus kind of volume upselling more products and just really leaning in with those large operators and then wanting more from Genie?

Speaker 3

Hey, Ryan, it's Nick. I mean, in truth, why it's all of that. As you know, we did a lot of contract renegotiations during the fall of twenty twenty four and all of those things that you just talked about in terms of new product, VectVision is obviously the most talked about example, more events, higher price, all of that plays into that. It's very difficult to actually pick that apart because that's not how our contracts are structured. But you're absolutely right.

Speaker 3

We're very pleased with that style and we expect to continue that it will be strong going forward.

Speaker 9

And just for my follow-up, any early feedback you're getting on FanHub and what you're hearing from your customers, what they like, maybe don't like updates coming this year? Thanks.

Speaker 5

Yes. Look, it's super early days. Remember, we only launched this product in October. But I think the key thing to focus on is that we saw the shift coming, you know, quite a long time ago in the way that media is being being managed. You know, it's moving from managed to self serve and and, the product rollout that we that we focused on the divestment that we've made over the last couple of years to get ourselves in a position where we have, you know, a a credible self serve platform is is an investment that's been well made.

Speaker 5

I mean, I'm sure you heard what's, I'm sure you heard the the the the comments that Trade Desk made about the way that the market's going and and, you know, how sports sport is a very interesting vertical. We're incredibly well placed in that space. So I think from our point of view, you know, we we know we we've got the right product. There's still some work to do. We're still rolling it out.

Speaker 5

These are really early days, hence that we're being super, super cautious in our guide about how much of that's really going to come through into the business in 2025 in real revenue terms. But we see some quite material upside assuming we get that product rolled out and that well. And, you know, the best thing about it is that we know the product's good. We know the product's good. We know it's the right product.

Speaker 5

We know we've got the right data. We we've got a really good new team of people that we've brought in under our new CTO who, you know, clearly has a lot of experience coming from Google and, the team he's brought in are delivering very, very quickly actually a lot of the new product features. So we're feeling very positive about that and it's being well received in the market and the conversations are going well.

Operator

The next question comes from Mike Heeke from The Benchmark Company. Your line is open.

Speaker 10

Hey, Mark, Nick, Charles, Brian and congrats guys on a great 2024. Nice to see the '25 very strong 2025 guide as well. Just two questions for us. The first one, Mark, it seems like your operator partners, in particular DraftKings in The U. S, seems very enthusiastic about sort of unlocking the growth of Amplay.

Speaker 10

And I think we saw maybe an early look at that during the Super Bowl, but sort of curious your experience there and what you think are sort of the keys to unlocking Amplay, play, which has been, I think, somewhat maybe of a disappointment versus your original expectations, but now is maybe starting to inflect

Speaker 8

a bit. And then I have a follow-up.

Speaker 5

Yes. I think I mean, to be honest with you, I think you said it in your question. We're seeing the shift that we always thought we would from the operators to focus on. I mean, it's obviously worth reminding people the increased take rates, the increased margins that you get from an in play bet. And I think the operators are very heavily focused on that.

Speaker 5

Bet vision is clearly delivering extremely strongly. We gave the numbers in the presentation earlier in terms of the increases in in play and sort of time on the stream. So the vision and the strategy have come together very nicely and we're feeling good.

Speaker 10

Nice. On your guide, Nick, it sounded like you made maybe a philosophical change here in terms of how you build it up. Obviously, it was very strong above consensus. Historically, you've kind of taken the approach of maybe disappointing a little bit and then beating and raising through the year. But I guess now that you just have better visibility on the revenue and cost in 25%, has your sort of approach changed here?

Speaker 10

Or should we expect another year of beating and raising? Thanks, guys.

Speaker 3

Yes. Hey, Mike. I mean, in concept, our strategy hasn't changed at all, Mike. I mean, what I would say is as we've entered the year, we certainly have more clarity entering 2025 than we've done in 2024, if you remember where we were at this point last year. And therefore, I expect us probably to be slightly more accurate with this guide than we've done before.

Speaker 3

You've heard me say, Mike, that in the medium term, we expect to be a 20% revenue growth business and that's what I'm guiding to this year. You've heard us say that we expect that to drop through at sort of 30% to 40% in the medium term and again that's what we're guiding to this year. And you've heard us talk about being cash accretive in 2024 and I expect that to continue through to 2025. So, yes, no change in philosophy, probably just have a slightly more visibility this year than we've done previously.

Speaker 5

You can't fight nature, mate. We're still the same conservative Brexit we've always been.

Operator

The next question comes from Eric Martinuzzi from Lake Street Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Speaker 8

Yes. I was just curious on the Media Tech part of the business. The 4% growth in Q4 was below what I was expecting. The 15% growth for the year, obviously at double digits and that's impressive, but still below the company average. As you look out to 2025, you're talking about growth of 21% for the entire business.

Speaker 8

Where does MediaTek fall on that growth spectrum?

Speaker 3

Yes. Hey, I mean, you're right. I mean, first of all, 15% year on year growth for 2024 as a whole is something that we're pretty happy with. And as you say, media delivered double digit growth every year since we've gone public. I'm expecting 2025 to be another double digit year.

Speaker 3

And I think Mark's already talked about in some of the previous questions about the exciting part of the media business and fun hub. And as the Media market is evolving, how we're leading that evolution. So expecting a strong year for Media in 2025.

Operator

The next question comes from Jordan Bender from Citizans. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Good morning, everyone. On the expansion for Global Sports for Vision in '25, just curious how we should be thinking about that from an investment perspective? And given that the ex U. S. Business is a largely fixed revenue business, should we be thinking about that impact?

Speaker 4

Is there will be another upsell to operators and it may take time to recognize that revenue from this initiative?

Speaker 3

Yes. Hey, John. Clearly, as we roll out that vision, there will be revenues directly associated with that piece of product for 2025, which is predominantly already built into the guide. As you've heard Mark talk about earlier in the call, I mean, they're really exciting for us around getting that vision out in the ubiquitous nature. It is all the strategic aspects of what Vision is driving for us and how that comes together with our own unique inventory and the piece of fan hub and around the old broadcast.

Speaker 3

I mean, that's really the exciting piece, which whether that's a 25 piece or a 26 piece and beyond will depend on how quickly as Mark's way to talk about the acceleration of product. But any specific revenues in relation to BetVision already built into 25 as a technology product?

Speaker 4

Understood. And then just following up on the guidance, I

Speaker 3

was just seeing if we

Speaker 4

could get some clarity around kind of what's baked into that. We have Missouri in the back half of the year, is that in there? Brazil just went live Jan one to the extent that you can help us with how much that's baked in? And then Football DataCo, I believe those rates hit in the back half of the year. Just kind of how does that impact the 36% flow through guidance for the year?

Speaker 4

Thank you.

Speaker 3

Yes. So I mean, everything that you just commented on and everything that we're aware of today is baked into that. So whether that's any state, and I think you're right, Missouri is really the only material state. Brazil, we're obviously live with. So what that looks like in 2025 is baked into these forecasts as well as are all of our cost base, which includes rights.

Speaker 3

As you know, Jordan, our rights are fixed and have complete visibility, not just through 25%, but obviously beyond through to the end of the decade. And as we've announced this morning, we're expecting our EBITDA margins to grow. They've grown consistently over the last three years and we've announced guiding this morning from 16.8% through to north of 20%. That includes any uplift on all rights that we're expecting, including the new SEC contract.

Operator

The next question comes from Clark Lambton from BTIG. Your line is open.

Speaker 11

Thanks for taking the questions. I have two. Following up on BetVision, Nick, I'm curious if you would be willing at all to dimensionalize how much is included in the guidance for 2025. But then maybe adjacent to that, how much flexibility do you have for ad insertion as Betten Vision is expanding to new sports? If you guys wanted to do pre rolls, are you able to make that decision on your own?

Speaker 11

Or is there, a discussion that you need to have with some of your partners, whether it's the B2C partner or the league to make sure that you get that inventory live? And on margin expansion guidance for the year, if we're thinking about the sort of three fifty basis points or so that you're expecting, is there going to be a meaningful difference between gross margins and EBITDA? Is most of the upside really coming from direct cost leverage rather than OpEx this year? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Hey, so

Speaker 5

on the inventory point, look, I mean, it's our player. That's how we develop the products there. So we've got a level of control and clearly, this was the strategy that we've lined up. So the short answer is yes, we have the ability to do that.

Speaker 3

Yes. And hey, Clark, there's a couple in there for me as well. So just on '25 in terms of BetVision, I'm not going to call out specifically what that is in relation to tech. And the answer I gave earlier, I think it was to Jordan's question in relation to the strategic aspect of that, and really that's not built into '25 at all. That's any upside.

Speaker 3

And based on how quickly we can accelerate the product launches that Mark's already talked about, specifically in terms of the makeup of the income statement for '25, I mean, we've had some success. And I think we called out in the prepared remarks on the slide in relation to both gross margin and direct costs, and I'm expecting a similar makeup through '25 as well.

Operator

The next question comes from Chad Beynon from Macquarie. Your line is open.

Speaker 12

Hi, good morning. Congrats on the result and the guide for 2025. Thanks for everything so far. Just one for me, just trying to figure out how some of the tax proposals that are going on around the world could impact your business. I know there was a tax change down in Colombia kind of pushing the tax down to the consumer.

Speaker 12

But given the breadth of different bills that have been proposed so far this year, particularly in The United States, wondering how you think that fits into the business long term? And if you expect to see much impact from that? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Hey, Chad. I mean, I guess the key answer is really the resilience of our business model, Chad, is what I'd say. I mean, first of all, these tax changes are really regulatory changes. They're nothing new. We've seen it all before as other markets have matured on a global basis.

Speaker 3

And as you know, we have so many different levers of growth. We have so many different geographies. The U. S. Is still it's not a majority of our revenues and then you separate it on a state by state basis.

Speaker 3

You can see that it becomes immaterial on an individual basis. But the key thing really is that sort of picks and shovels play on that global basis really protects us from that position.

Speaker 12

Appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Operator

The last question comes from Thomas Shinsk from Cantor Fitzgerald. Your line is open.

Speaker 13

Hi guys. This is Thomas on for Brett. Thank you for taking my question. I guess just one for me. Given the results were largely in line with the guidance despite declining bookmaker win margins during the quarter, is it fair to say that in play adoption was broadly in line with your guys' expectations?

Speaker 13

Or was this mostly driven by increases in the pricing resulting from the contract renegotiations? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Hey, Thomas, this is Nick. Look, I guess it's quite similar to the answer. I just given to Chad's question around resiliencies of our business model. The way we're set up with our sportsbooks is that any particular result doesn't materially impact us given our global geographical spread. Also, the way our contracts have been set up are slightly different in twenty twenty four new contracts.

Speaker 3

They've evolved slightly. It's still true that we will grow as the market grows as the tailwinds in the industry, whether that's in place sports betting or TAM increases. But we have got things like new and revenue guarantees in place to protect us from any vagaries of any particular one off results. And you've obviously seen that in Q4. You've heard that from operators.

Speaker 3

And as you say, we're directly in line with our expectations. And that's really one of the key things about Genius Sports in terms of that resilience of business model.

Speaker 7

Thank you, Nick.

Operator

And that is the end of the Q and A session. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining and you may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
Genius Sports Q4 2024
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