Embracer Group AB (publ) (OTC:THQQF) Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call February 16, 2022 3:00 AM ET
Company Participants
Lars Wingefors – Chief Executive Officer & Founder
Johan Ekstrom – Chief Financial Officer
Stephane Carville – CEO, Asmodee Group
Muge Bouillon – Chief Financial Officer, Asmodee Group
Careen Yapp – Chief Strategic Partnerships Officer
Soren Lundgaard – Co-Founder and CEO, Ghost Ship Games
Conference Call Participants
Simon Jonsson – ABG Sundal Collier
Martin Arnell – DNB Markets
Nick Dempsey – Barclays
Rasmus Engberg – Handelsbanken
Jacob Edler – Danske Bank
Operator
Welcome to the presentation of Embracer Group’s Q3 report. My name is Simon Jonsson and I will be the moderator today. On today’s agenda, we have two sessions. In the first part, Lars and Johan will have a presentation of the Q3 report. We’ll also have a presentation from Asmodee. Following that, we will have a Q&A session where you as an audience can send in questions via the web or verbally via teleconference.
In the second part, we’ll have two deep dives. First, we will hear from Careen, the new Head of Strategic Partnerships, and then also Soren, who is the founder of Ghost Ship Games.
With that said, Lars, I’ll leave the floor to you.
Lars Wingefors
Thank you, Simon. And hello, everyone, and welcome to Stockholm and Embracer Group’s Interim Report for Q3 2022/2023. First of all, I just wanted to take a moment to reflect on what we have built at Embracer. We today consist of 12 operating groups, over 16,000 employees, and over 130 studios and 800 IPs, with a business that is well diversified between four operating segments.
We firmly believe that our decentralized model that’s empowering entrepreneurs, creators and our great people is the best model to drive long-term profitable growth in a highly creative industry. I would like to send my thanks to all our shareholders, employees, customers and business partners for contributing to the prosperity and success of the group.
Now on to the highlights of the quarter. We are pleased to announce another stable quarter, delivering largely in line with management expectations. Our diversified business across segments drove solid net sales of SEK11.6 billion, adjusted EBIT of SEK2 billion and SEK1.7 billion of free cash flow in third quarter.
Free cash flow exceeded management expectations driven by great cash flow generation within operating groups of Asmodee, Coffee Stain, Easybrain and Crystal Dynamics. The organic growth in the third quarter of minus 3% reflects tough year-on-year comparisons and limited new PC/Console game releases. Delays announced in previous quarters have led to a limited number of large budget game releases for the PC/Console game segment and a lower gross profit contribution in 2022, 2023, impacting operating margins.
For the overall group, we reiterate our adjusted EBIT forecast of SEK8 billion to SEK10 billion in this fiscal year and SEK10.3 billion to SEK13.6 billion in the next fiscal year. As previously communicated in second quarter, the forecast includes a notable range of outcomes from partnership and licensing deals with several industry partners expected to be completed during this quarter ending March.
Coffee Stain continues their success this quarter, driven by Goat Simulator 3 that had a strong acclaim from fans, providing a platform to further grow the player base over time. Together with our Danish colleagues at Ghost Ship Games, who continue their impressive work with Deep Rock Galactic, there is a lot to look forward to from Coffee Stain in the quarters and years ahead. Søren, the founder of Ghost Ship Games, will join us in the second part of today’s presentation.
Within Tabletop segment, Asmodee delivered a solid performance, driving strong sequential revenue and earnings growth, as well as stronger free cash flow, despite a challenging macro environment in the seasonally strongest quarter of the year. Moving to PC/Console, I’m happy to see that Dead Island two went Gold this week and is ready for release finally. The game coming out a week earlier than previously expected, on April 21 this year. The response from Dead Island community and media has been exciting, and we are looking forward to April. The key driver for our future organic growth will be the execution of our game development pipeline. In total, we had SEK8.2 billion invested by the end of the quarter. Looking ahead, we got 94 projects expected by local management to be released next fiscal year.
Looking further out, we got in total 31 AAA games to be released up until fiscal year 2027, 2028. 26 of these AAA games are still unannounced. However, we need to be humble and acknowledge that our overall return of investment performance on PC/Console games released this financial year has underperformed management expectations. Rather than a structural shift, we believe it’s mainly an effect of mixed reception for several releases, combined with a more normalized — in a more normalized market and softer consumer purchasing power this year.
Our core business is making a healthy risk-adjusted profit on games. We have, therefore, increased management focus and efforts to optimize investments and efficiency across the group even further. To simplify, each project has to earn its right to exist, which means we will increase our efforts to put quality first even further and make sure we are creating engaging unique positive player experiences.
We are confident in clearly improved return of investment on new products compared to the last quarters. In late December, we successfully changed the listing venue to NASDAQ Stockholm main market, further strengthening transparency, governance and liquidity in our shares. The uplisting is a testament to the strong foundation we have built over the years.
As stated, we expect partnership and licensing deals with several industry partners expected to be completed during this quarter ending March. The demand for content has never been greater and Embracer is well-positioned to leverage that demand with the largest portfolio of games and IPs in the industry. We have set the goal to increase the mix of PC/Console games development that is wholly or partly funded by third parties from today’s level. This mainly relates to a number of sizable game development projects over the coming six years with high development budgets.
While a majority of the overall pipeline will still be wholly funded with the group, expanding the third-party funding is expected to significantly improve cash flow and profit predictability. The Tomb Raider publishing agreement with Amazon announced in December that we entered into the third quarter is one example of this kind of partnership.
Finally, a key part of our ongoing development and progress is an increased focus on sustainability, a priority area for me, our business, and our people. It’s encouraging to see that those efforts and the strengthening of our corporate capabilities at the parent company are paying off through improved ESG ratings. In the past few months, MSCI upgraded our ESG rating from BBB to A. And we are now also part of Sustainalytics 2023 top-rated ESG companies list.
Moving a bit to the numbers, and Johan will enter the stage soon here, but I would like to highlight a few things that we continue to grow both in financial and operational terms. On a trailing 12-month basis, our adjusted EBIT has grown by a 4-year compounded annual growth rate of around 90%. More importantly, the way we look at it, the adjusted earnings per share has grown by a CAGR of over 50%.
Operationally, the total number of projects stood at 224 at the end of third quarter, driven by previous year’s organic and inorganic investments in our studios and personnel. We would like to talk more about the pipeline in the second part of this presentation. So stay tuned.
Embracer operates through 12 operating groups across four segments. In third quarter, the Tabletop Games and Mobile Games segment stood for a majority of adjusted EBIT in a slower quarter for PC/Console. It is a notable difference compared to second quarter when PC/Console drove sales and earnings and shows our increased diversification.
PC/Console games. Net sales in the quarter for PC/Console games amounted to about SEK3.5 billion, an increase by 64% compared to the same period last year or minus 6% organically and minus 5% pro forma in constant currency. Adjusted EBIT amounted to SEK579 million and adjusted EBIT margin of 16%. The muted organic growth development is mainly explained by less new significant game releases. We see a continued stable performance for live game services and for our strongest PC/Console game franchises, but also note a more normalized market for certain categories, partly due to softer consumer purchasing power after a strong market both in 2020 and 2021.
The clear positive in the quarter was Coffee Stain, which had both the largest new game releases through Goat Simulator 3 as well as one of the best performing back catalog titles with Deep Rock Galactic developed and published by Ghost Ship Games. Coffee Stain also added Welcome to Bloxburg, one of the most popular games on the Roblox platform in the past years. I’m happy to see the game is performing in line with or slightly above management’s expectations so far.
That said, the delays announced in previous quarter have led to a limited number of larger PC/Console games releases and lower gross profit contribution in fiscal year 2022, 2023, impacting our adjusted EBIT margin. The profitability in third quarter is also impacted by amortization of game development costs for titles released with low return of investment in Q1 and Q2, including the Saints Row reboot.
In our fourth quarter, we have several midsized titles that have been released or will be released, including SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake, Warlander, Pinball FX, one of the most ambitious pinball games ever, Deceive Inc. from Tripwire and Valhiem finally on Xbox 1 Game Pass.
Moving to Mobile Games. Net sales in the quarter for Mobile Games amounted to about SEK1.5 billion, an increase by 2% compared to the same period last year or minus 14% organically and 15% pro forma. Adjusted EBIT amounted to SEK464 million with 29% adjusted EBIT margin, a notable improvement compared to last year.
Easybrain and DECA have successfully optimized user acquisition investments, which has provided strong profitability and cash flow in the quarter. The quarter saw solid sequential growth, reflecting positive seasonality effects. However, the segment also saw some headwinds from tough comparisons and lower ad prices compared to last year, impacted by Apple’s changes relating to IDFA, lower player engagement post COVID, and macroeconomic factors.
Easybrain released its new Backgammon game globally in the quarter and has five titles in soft launch. Looking at the catalog, the strongest titles were BlockuDoku, Sudoku.com, Jigsaw Puzzles Art Puzzle and Nonogram.com. I would like to highlight that our Mobile Games business companies are expected to show continued profitable growth in the years ahead.
Soon moving over to Paris, I would like to highlight the Tabletop segment. Asmodee delivered a solid performance, driving strong sequential revenue and earnings growth, as well as stronger free cash flow, which I’m happy to see. Pro forma growth year-on-year was slightly negative at minus 5% in the quarter with very tough comparisons. Asmodee reached 21% adjusted EBIT margin and stood for 40% of the group EBIT in its seasonally strongest quarter of the year.
Asmodee is expected to deliver full year earnings largely in line with expectation last year with significantly improved free cash flow in the second half of the year.
With that, I would like to hand over to Asmodee’s CEO, Stephane, and CFO, Muge. Welcome to Stockholm.
Stephane Carville
Thank you, Lars. Can you hear us well?
Lars Wingefors
I hear you very well.
Stephane Carville
So thanks, Lars. It’s a pleasure to be joining you once again. This is a hello from sunshine in Paris today. Good morning, everybody. Before we get into the detail of the presentation, I just wanted to take 1 minute to cover some of our key messages.
In a challenging macroeconomic context, we’re happy, as you said, Lars, to present a solid Q3 performance for Asmodee. Q3 year-to-date, the Tabletop market of board games plus strategic TCGs has remained stable year-on-year, with growth in strategic TCGs offsetting, I will say, a moderate decrease in the board game segment. The Tabletop market still remains well above the pre-COVID levels of 2019 and then shows its strong resilience.
Tabletop games also remain a favorite with consumers over the holiday season and mass market sellout reached a record level in December. From a financial standpoint, as we exit our seasonally strongest quarter, we delivered a solid top line performance with Q3 net sales up 28% above — versus Q2 and only slightly below Q3 last year against a very strong comparator. And Muge will go into more detail in a couple of minutes.
On the EBIT, despite the inflationary environment, our adjusted EBIT performance remained resilient with Q3 up 91% versus Q2 in our seasonally strongest quarter. Finally, on working capital and cash, I’m happy to report to you that we’ve delivered on our projections, as you will see in detail in the coming slides presented by Muge.
Looking now in a bit more detail at the market and sell out data. Again, as for the selling performance, we see that the Tabletop market is resilient in a challenging context. The Tabletop market was slightly down in Q3, against in an all-time record comparator, which was 25% higher than pre-COVID levels, and on a year-to-date basis, this result in a stable Tabletop market.
Looking now at the two main categories. We see strong growth in the STG segment, which is up 18% in the EU, for example, while the Board Game segment was softer with a moderate decrease of approximately 6%. This being said, the market remains significantly above pre-COVID levels with 2019, 2022 CAGR of plus 11%.
I’m handing over to you now, Muge.
Muge Bouillon
Thank you, Stephane. Hi, everyone. I’m very pleased to report on Asmodee’s performance. In our seasonally strongest quarter, Q3 net sales of SEK4.1 billion were up 28%, and adjusted EBIT was up 91% compared to Q2, driven by the seasonal effect of the holiday season.
Versus last year pro forma, Q3 net sales were only slightly down circa 2%. But as Stephane mentioned earlier, sales remained well above pre-COVID levels. The performance was impacted by the softer Board Game market. This was partly offset by growth in trading card games and other distributed products despite a strong comparator due to Pokemon’s 25th anniversary release in the prior year.
The increased contribution of trading card games had a negative impact on the product mix, but this was partly offset by lower royalties and other selling expenses. This led to a limited decrease of 0.1 point in gross margin percentage, which, combined with the volume effect on top line, resulted in Q3, adjusted EBIT of SEK864 million, slightly below pro forma last year at minus 4%.
For the financial year-to-date, net sales of SEK10 billion were up 5% versus pro forma last year. The trend in full year reflects the pattern just described for Q3 with growth driven by TCGs. This offsets a soft performance on games, which were down 8% after two consecutive record years, nevertheless, remaining above pre-COVID levels.
The positive volume effect of top line growth is offset by product mix impact from increased contribution of trading card games as well as higher shipping costs. And I shall precise, these have started to moderate in the latter part of the year. This gives the gross margin largely in line with pro forma last year.
As with most companies, we are also experiencing significant inflationary pressures on our cost base with inflation running at an average of 8% in markets where we operate. We have put in place actions to mitigate these impacts, limiting the increase in operating costs to 3%. This results in adjusted EBIT of SEK1.8 billion, slightly down by 3% versus pro forma last year.
Moving on to the next slide. I want to take a few minutes now to remind you what we said during Q2 presentation with regards to inventory and cash. We’ll then take a look at the progress we have made at the end of Q3. I hope this will help to demonstrate the predictability of our business.
In Q2, we emphasized the seasonality of our working capital cycle, where inventory levels historically reached a peak around the end of September. We also explained that our inventory was impacted by a number of temporary effects amounting to around SEK670 million.
Finally, we showed the historic seasonality in free cash flow generation with most cash generation occurring in H2. Our expectation at the end of Q2 was that we would see the unwinding of seasonal and temporary effects over the next 12 months. We also mentioned our expectation of strong H2 cash generation despite a partial phasing to next year linked to the unwinding of temporary effects in inventory.
Well, having said all of that, let’s take a moment to see where we find ourselves at the end of Q3. Firstly, I’m happy to report that we have seen the seasonal unwinding of inventory that we described. Inventory decreased by SEK543 million or 15% on a like-for-like basis versus Q2.
The inventory unwinding combined with a focus on working capital management resulted in strong cash flow generation of SEK780 million. This compares to around SEK550 million of free cash flow consumption in H1. The Q3 free cash flow represents around 90% cash conversion of Q3 adjusted EBIT. Overall, we are in line with our internal forecast for the unwinding of inventory to year-end and still expect the temporary effects in inventory to unwind over the next quarters. We are also on track to deliver further free cash flow generation in Q4. As a matter of fact, January has already delivered over EUR 20 million free cash flow, and we maintain our expectation of strong H2 cash generation we mentioned previously.
Handing back now to Stephane.
Stephane Carville
Thank you, Muge. Moving on some of other highlights and business updates. As we mentioned in Q2, we had a strong slate of releases in Q3, combining new iteration in major franchises and a number of original and own IP’s board games. These new releases were, I must say, well received, with, for example, our new game, Challengers, published by our studio Z-Man, notably being nominated for a prestigious French board game awards.
We continue to work closely with other Embracer operating units, and we currently have a number of projects in the contractual phase. I’m very happy that two projects have already been signed, namely Descent and Exploding Kittens VR, which will be developed by Saber Studios.
In terms of M&A, last quarter we announced the acquisition of VR Distribution in Australia and happy to report that the integration is proceeding smoothly. We currently have five active discussions underway with a solid pipeline of order target under consideration.
Finally, as we approach the end of our first year as part of the Embracer family, we are working on our strategic priorities for next year. We expect this to include a return to a high pace of new releases and novelties after slower rhythm during the peak of COVID. We will maintain a strong focus on driving growth in our back catalog. As we cannot ignore the global inflationary pressures, we’ll continue to focus on the responsible management of our cost base. We aim to secure a return to normalized inventory level, as Muge just said, and we expect this to drive strong free cash flow generation. We’ll continue working closely with the other Embracer operative units to realize mutual opportunities for leveraging our growth IPs.
And finally, as mentioned before, we’ll continue to pursue inorganic growth opportunities within the context of the Embracer Group’s wider M&A strategy.
That ends our presentation. I’m handing over to you, Lars and Johan.
Lars Wingefors
Thank you, Stephane. Thank you, Muge. So let’s head over to our last segment of Entertainment & Services. Net sales in the quarter for that segment was SEK2.3 billion, an increase of 71% compared to the same period last year, or 16% organically and 16% pro forma.
Adjusted EBIT reached a peak of all-time high of SEK187 million, yielding 8% adjusted EBIT margin. The organic and pro forma growth was mainly driven by a partner publishing title released in the third quarter.
In the quarter, Freemode closed the acquisition of Middle-Earth Enterprises. The acquisition has generated a lot of interest among both internal and external partners for the Lord of the Rings IPs across different media formats. There are currently five games in production by external partners to be released in financial year 2023, 2024. There is also one film under production by an external partner. Stay tuned for more news in the future.
Freemode continues to make selective key recruitments as a group in various parts of the business to strengthen the organization. Within Freemode, Grimfrost, the e-commerce specialist, is a leading player with Viking merchandise, also had a stable quarter. The company successfully launched a Valheim community web store and this has been a success. There could be further opportunities for Grimfrost from increasingly strong IPs and franchises within the group.
Looking briefly at the market. The global video games market is estimated by news to grow 5% year-over-year 2023 to USD 194 billion, driven by a much better console supply and a stronger lineup of new releases, amongst other factors. 2022 was corrective year following two years of pandemic, with the global games market declining 4% year-over-year. But if you compare to 2019, the market growth has grown by 28%.
Let’s head over to Johan, so we have some time for Q&A later on.
Johan Ekstrom
Thank you, Lars. So let’s start with the key P&L metrics for the quarter. As said, sales amounted to SEK11.6 billion in the quarter, up 128% over last year. The growth is driven by the inclusion of Asmodee, Crystal Dynamics/Eidos, as well as Dark Horse, and also a positive effect from weaker SEKversus last year.
Organic growth and pro forma growth at constant currency were slightly negative at 3%. If you look at the PC/Console games segment, it includes the successful release of Goat Simulator 3 and also an important contract regarding Tomb Raider 12. Fewer larger releases in the quarter as well as mixed receptions on some releases impacted negatively. On the mobile game side, we had tough comparisons last year and also lower ad prices affecting in the quarter.
We are happy to see that Asmodee delivered well during their peak season in the quarter, adding SEK4.1 billion of sales in the quarter. Adjusted EBIT came in at SEK2 billion in the quarter, growing with 78% over last year, yielding a 17% EBIT margin.
Looking at the segments, the profitability within PC/Console was 16%, which is lower compared to prior quarters. And the main reason for this is higher amortizations in relation to net sales for less successful titles, as well as lower profitability in the initial phase of the large contract related to Tomb Raider.
Mobile Games reached their highest margin since the inclusion of CrazyLabs in the quarter with 29%. For Tabletop, we also see a healthy contribution to EBIT in the quarter, SEK864 million.
Looking at the adjusted EPS per share, fully diluted, it reached SEK0.70 in the quarter, which is lower than the corresponding period last year. But if you exclude the effects from exchange gains and losses in both quarters, it’s a growth of 23%.
Moving on to financial development. Gross margin in the quarter reached 56%, which is lower than the previous quarters and mainly related to product mix shifts within PC/Console and Tabletop, but also a segment mix shift towards Entertainment & Services.
Looking at marketing expenses, user acquisitions, both in absolute terms and relative terms, are lower in the quarter. If we look at the marketing expenses, excluding user acquisition costs, they amounted to SEK400 million in the quarter and mainly relates to Asmodee during their high season, but also to some extent, the PC/Console segment.
Operating expenses increased in the quarter in absolute terms, mainly driven by the new companies joining Embracer, but also an increased headcount. We, as everyone else, is impacted by inflation. The visibility of it is more clear on the physical side of the business. On the development side, the lead times are longer, and we first see an impact in CapEx, and we will later have the impact through EBIT through amortizations.
We’re happy to report a solid free cash flow in the quarter of SEK1.7 billion, which was slightly higher than expected. The solid cash flow generation is related to the reduction of inventory as well as payments from notable customer contracts, where the Tomb Raider contract is an important part.
The actions initiated in previous quarters to focus on working capital reduction are progressing according to plan. And we also expect to see a solid cash conversion in this current quarter. Cash outflow from acquisitions is mainly related to the closing of Middle-Earth Enterprises as well as Tripwire, and also acquisitions closed in prior periods.
At the end of December, net debt amounted to SEK14.3 billion and available funds to SEK7.2 billion. We expect to reach our internal financial leverage target of 1x by the end of this fiscal year. We have, in our loan agreements, covenants which are 2.5x net debt over adjusted EBITDA, and at the end of December, we had substantial headroom to these covenants. By the time of this report today, available funds amount to SEK6 billion.
Looking at the forecast. As Lars mentioned, we reiterate our adjusted EBIT forecast, which is between SEK8 billion and SEK10 billion for this current financial year, and between SEK10.3 billion and SEK13.6 billion for the next financial year.
For the PC/Console segment, we see a continued stable performance of live game services and for our strongest franchises. But we also note a more normalized market for certain categories after a strong market in both 2020 and 2021. There are no major game releases expected in the quarter. As previously communicated, a notable range of outcomes from partnership and licensing deals is expected to be completed and contribute.
For the mobile games segment, we expect a seasonally lower Q4 and lower ad prices, resulting in an adjusted EBIT margin for Q4 that is below the year-to-date average. It’s also worth noting that in the comparable period last year, we had a notable income from one specific partnership deal within the segment.
In the Tabletop segment, we expect the seasonally lowest activity and adjusted EBIT margin of the financial year in line with historical patterns.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Q – Simon Jonsson
So welcome to the Q&A. Thanks for the presentations. Maybe start off with each saying one thing you did really good in the quarter and one thing that you think you should have done better. Starting with you, Lars.
Lars Wingefors
No, I think you can always improve. I think if you are satisfied — so I think in all segments, there is always room to improve. But obviously, it was a bit disappointing to see some return of investment on new games releases. But it’s something we’ve been talking about, and I’m sure you’ll have some more questions, so…
Simon Jonsson
And maybe talk about the guidance, the forecast. I mean, what is needed for you to — what is required for you to reach the top end? And do you still expect — without the strategic partnership deals you talked about, could you still make the range without that?
Lars Wingefors
Well, the range is — as we stated today, we expect to close partnership licensing deals in the quarter. And there is a notable range outcome for those deals. But as usual, we are in the games industry. So until all games releases in the quarter is finished, you don’t fully know the outcomes of game titles either.
Simon Jonsson
All right. But making the range, is that dependent on the deals or that sort that you will sign them?
Lars Wingefors
Well, we are expecting to have these deals closing this quarter.
Simon Jonsson
All right. Johan, on the free cash flow, you had a divestment of around SEK 450 million in the quarter, lowering the net investments. Could you elaborate a bit about that item?
Johan Ekstrom
Yes. So that’s related to the Tomb Raider contract. So it’s really the proceeds for the sales of that project, the completion rate of that project by the end of the year.
Simon Jonsson
So is it fair to assume that, that positive effect is also included negatively in the CapEx before, so it’s like a neutral effect?
Johan Ekstrom
No. So not necessarily. So the EUR 450 million, that will be the revenue related to the contract. And then within CapEx, you will have capitalization for Crystal Dynamics/Eidos for the quarter and the project, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the same amount.
Simon Jonsson
All right. So it’s fair to assume that as the contract continues that you will receive more income?
Johan Ekstrom
Yes. And as stated also, when you are sort of in the initial phase of a quite large project, the profitability and, of course, the risk adjustments that you need to make lowers or reduces the profitability in that initial period.
Simon Jonsson
All right. Lars, you talked about improving ROI. Could you elaborate a bit on why now and how you will do it?
Lars Wingefors
I think it’s a constant progress. And now we’ve been talking a lot about quality, the importance of quality. And I mentioned here on stage before about creating a unique engaging player experiences. I think it’s even more important now and going forward. So I think it’s a renewed focus because we could see that in order to be successful, the games need to hit a bar with the consumer. And if it does, you do great. But if it doesn’t, it’s a tough market.
Simon Jonsson
Could it be that you had some headwind — sorry, tailwinds in the pandemic that made you do some project, which today would receive poor ROI, and you, therefore, do less projects or more restrictive going forward? Or how should we think about the new pipeline going forward? Will you make lesser games or more games or focus on big ones?
Lars Wingefors
No, I think making PC/Console games is a long-term investment. We have some amazing IPs, studios, and people that are making those. And you set a long-term plan, and you don’t change that. But what you need to make sure is you’re hitting the bar that you set out from the beginning. And I think now when the market is more muted, it’s very clear that it’s true that quality comes first, and it’s just critical that we need to hit that quality bar in order to be successful.
Simon Jonsson
All right. And looking at the reviews of the recent games, it seems like the performance has actually improved somewhat in recent months and quarters.
Lars Wingefors
I’m glad to see as well.
Simon Jonsson
That said, I think it’s time we invite the telephone conference.
Operator
[Operator Instructions]
Lars Wingefors
I’m not sure if that was the question, or not.
Simon Jonsson
I think it’s coming.
Lars Wingefors
Okay.
Operator
There are no questions from the telco at this time. So maybe you can go ahead with a few more while people are queuing up.
Simon Jonsson
Yes. The audience. Do we have any questions from the audience? Yes. The mic is coming.
Martin Arnell
Martin Arnell with DNB. My first question is on the cash flow. I remember that you said during this year that Q4 is the big delivery quarter. Is that still the case? And could you elaborate a little bit on the mechanics?
Johan Ekstrom
So for cash flow, I think we have always said that Q3 and Q4 will be better than the first half of the year, especially if you look at businesses that have a clear seasonality. And for example, I think the good thing within Tabletop, we see the inventory reduction, but we also know and see that our receivables related to the revenues generated in Q3 that will flow in, in the last part of the quarter. And as I said, we expect to see a high cash conversion and a strong cash flow also in Q4.
Martin Arnell
And on cash conversion, you mentioned high expectations for Asmodee in the next year. But what about the remaining business of the group when it comes to cash conversion. Can you give any flavor on what you expect there?
Johan Ekstrom
I think clearly, with Asmodee, we have a specific effect, right, that we have an excess inventory this year that will unwind this year partly, but also during next year. So that’s a shift. Within the Mobile Games segment, cash conversion is solid. If you look at the PC/Console segment, it’s very much dependent on performance of titles, but also, of course, CapEx, and to what extent you fund the project internally, or if you have co-development or co-publishing projects.
Martin Arnell
Okay. And my final two questions, maybe to you, Lars. Could you comment anything on the special review that the Board has ongoing and was presented in November? Or is it too early for that?
Lars Wingefors
No, it’s too early. It’s still ongoing. So I don’t have any more color than we already gave in the second quarter.
Martin Arnell
And finally, on the transformative partnerships, you mentioned that it’s with several partners, but how come you don’t announce them separately? Or are you expecting to close them all at once? Or how should we think about that?
Lars Wingefors
Well, announcement, it’s always a delicate thing regarding communication, and there is always two parties to dance. You noticed that we announced the Tomb Raider deal with Amazon and that was driven by commercial factors from one party. So I think we need to look in each and every communication, and obviously, it was also relating to the regulation that we are a public listed company as well.
Simon Jonsson
Do we have any more questions from the audience? Yes, one hand over there.
Unidentified Participant
[indiscernible] founder. Regarding the acquisition from Square Enix, now it’s been a while, and you have gotten your arms around it. Can you comment regarding what shape the business is in, if you’re very happy with that? And what you’ve learned since the deal has closed?
Lars Wingefors
No, I think in general we are very happy to have them on board. It’s still early in a very long journey. First of all, I’m super excited to have the people. I think there are some amazing games developers with a very long pedigree or legacy of making amazing games. So I’m confident about their ability to make high-quality or AAA games going forward, that brings value to the group and to potential future business partners.
Secondly, I think the interest around Tomb Raider as an IP has also strengthened the group alongside our acquisition of Lord of the Rings that also came last year. So that has definitely positioned strategically Embracer Group on a different level against various potential business partners around the world. Obviously, we are talking about people and we’re talking about a different part of the business. We unfortunately had to close the mobile part down, but we tried our best to keep it running. But in the end of the day, we need to take responsibility also for our shareholders’ money in the company.
Simon Jonsson
We can have some questions from the web. So first off, regarding the increased focus on third-party publishing going forward. What could that mean for the cash flow. Does it mean that you — is this mainly on the new projects? Or could you also, to a large extent, give existing internal projects to external publishers or — how should we view that? And what is the rationale behind that?
Lars Wingefors
Now you’re talking about partnership and licensing deals, yes?
Simon Jonsson
No, using more third-party publishing on your titles.
Lars Wingefors
Well, it’s a bit different things here. But if we’re talking…
Simon Jonsson
You talked about that you want to have more third-party funding projects. Yes. So I guess that is third-party…
Lars Wingefors
Could be publishers, could be industry players.
Simon Jonsson
It’s not necessarily an external publisher?
Lars Wingefors
Could be.
Simon Jonsson
Could be.
Lars Wingefors
But it doesn’t have to be.
Simon Jonsson
But this is a change in strategy because you’re kind of…
Lars Wingefors
No, I think we have, I would say, a significant portion — not a significant portion, but a notable portion of our people, our games developers within the group are working with third parties and funded by them already. We have quite sizable work-for-hire business, working with industry partners. We have what we define as a percentage of completion projects, for example, within Gearbox and Take-Two, and there is other examples, but we want to decrease that level. We would still have the absolute majority of the games funded on our own balance sheet. But even when we have third-party funding, we are confident that we have a very good share of — or a good share of the economic upside of that project.
Simon Jonsson
All right. But this is mainly when you refer to it now, is it more about new projects? Or is it more towards existing projects?
Lars Wingefors
We haven’t given — we gave the color really in our CEO report what kind of projects there is. There is — it’s regarding a number of very large or larger game development projects over the coming six years.
Simon Jonsson
Okay. Regarding the Lords of the Ring IP and the Amazon Lottery series. Have you received any royalties from that?
Lars Wingefors
I can’t confirm whether we have or not. We have received royalties from various partners during the third quarter. I don’t think that was a particularly very strong quarter in terms of royalties, but I know they’re expecting a lot more from existing partners, but also driven by a number of new projects that are to be released in this year.
Simon Jonsson
Okay. And Johan, for you. Maybe you touched upon it in the presentation, but in the D&A, depreciation and amortization, was there any onetime write-downs or impairments or anything?
Johan Ekstrom
No. So amortizations according to plan, the model that we have. So no extraordinary amortizations in the period.
Simon Jonsson
And on the Mobile side, active players was down Q-o-Q, if I remember right, but the revenue is still holding up quite well. So underlying, is there shift in sales mix or product mix? Or how should we view that change?
Lars Wingefors
On the Mobile side?
Simon Jonsson
Yes, Mobile.
Lars Wingefors
Yes. Obviously, the Mobile segment makes up different businesses, and they have their own drivers, whether they are ad-driven business or in-app purchase.
Simon Jonsson
Did you see any change in specific trends Q-over-Q here from last quarter now with the last — the Q3 being — for the Mobile market…
Lars Wingefors
I think the Q3 has been fairly similar to second quarter. So there is not like any big shift that’s happened between the quarters. But I think the big shift, if you look like a year or a few years ago, it’s obviously the ad prices has decreased. I still believe we have fantastic engagement from our mobile players and our games. We have 34 million players daily. And they’re sticky, they love to play those Sudoku games and other games. So I think it’s a very solid business.
Simon Jonsson
All right. I think we’ll leave it on that note and continue with the second half of this presentation, the deep dives.
Lars Wingefors
Thank you, Simon.
Johan Ekstrom
Thank you.
Simon Jonsson
Hello, everyone, and welcome back. So we will show a few slides and have a few people visiting us here. Johan.
Johan Ekstrom
Yes. So we’re continuing to build scalable corporate capabilities at the parent company. If we look back five years earlier or from now, we were nine people at the parent company, and now we are 55.
Looking at the parent company team and the functions that the team provides, it’s focus on corporate support, I would say, the majority of the people or the employees are within the Corporate Finance and Accounting team. So that’s approximately 50% of the employees in the parent company. 25% is within the legal team as well as ESG and Cybersecurity. And the remaining part is focused on M&A and business development and also Communication and Investor Relations.
If we also zoom out and take a look at the Global Finance team within the Embracer Group, we have the 26 people in Karlstad, and we also have senior CFOs, 12 of them, one for each of the operative groups, and an additional close to 480 people working within finance and accounting globally. So in total, slightly above 500 people.
We are very happy to welcome new hires. And joining us this quarter is [indiscernible]. So super excited about that. And last but not least, we are also very excited to welcome Careen Yapp, Embracer’s Chief Strategic Partnerships Officer. And Careen, you are with us here today. So very nice to have you here, and welcome.
Careen Yapp
Yes. Thank you, Johan. I’m so thrilled to be part of the Embracer Group team. I joined the video game industry in 1999 at THQ. So it feels like I’ve come home, although the family has grown quite a bit and has grown quite impressively. Over the course of my 22-year career, I’ve met with, worked with and/or have negotiated with a majority of the teams across the Embracer’s operating groups. I am now lucky to get to work alongside some of the best people I’ve met in this industry.
I’m excited to lead business development at the group level and to work together with the group executive management team and each operating group to help shape strategic partnerships. Our goal is to create sustainable organic synergies across the group’s ecosystem and to drive group-wide results, all while maintaining the culture of the decentralized operating model.
And finally, I look forward to continuing to support the individuals who shape the future of the video game industry through my work here at Embracer through my work as Chairman of the Board of Women in Games International, and as a Board member of the Entertainment Software Association Foundation. Back to you, Johan.
Johan Ekstrom
Thank you very much, Careen, and very much welcome on board.
Lars Wingefors
Thank you, Careen. Speak soon. Let’s head over to the pipeline. I want to share a bit more color on the future games pipeline as well as our pipeline of AAA games. It’s a refresher from our AAA pipeline deep dive around 15 months ago.
First of all, I would like to highlight that the release timings is based on local management latest estimates. When doing group financial forecasts, we would assume a notable number of games moving out from these 94 games and potentially a handful moving in.
As of 31st of December 2022, we had 224 games in our PC/Console pipeline, an increase compared to 216 in Q3 last year. Looking at the split between different categories of games, we have 31 AAA games in the pipeline and around 150 AA, A and [indiscernible]. Of those, around half have a development budget of more than SEK 40 million.
In addition, we have a number of major DLCs and porting projects. Gearbox, Plaion, Saber, and THQ Nordic stands for majority of the projects helmed. Note that the size of the game projects can vary significantly between operative groups.
Worth noting, this is only PC/Console. We have decided to take out any mobile games from this KPI. And also the closure of the Mobile business in Montreal reduced a number of games.
Looking at the 94 games we have in the pipeline for next financial year, I would like to give some more color. For example, we have four AAA games scheduled for release next year, and they have a median number of developers of around 150 people. The AAA titles next year includes Dead Island 2, now planned for April 21. It also includes Space Marine 2, Payday 3, and one unannounced AAA title. Apart from this, we also have large budget titles not classified as AAA, such as Remnant 2 and a range of small and mid-sized titles expected to be released during the year.
Now let’s turn to our pipeline of AAA games. I would like to start with the definition, because it’s very interesting to talk about AAA games in the industry, and there is no clear definition, but everyone has their own opinion, what is a AAA game. But for Embracer, when reporting, we have the following.
It has to have all three of these different criteria, about 100 full-time game developers at peak of development phase. It should have a notable or significant marketing budget and expected to become a minimum of 2 million units seller. And if development work is paid by an external partner, Embracer should have a notable economic upside.
So any pure work-for-hire projects are not included, even though they might be developed within the group. So we have 31 AAA games to be released until fiscal year 2027, 2028, of which four next year. Thereafter, we expect to bring to the market around seven to eight AAA games per year in the following three years. Of the 31 AAA games, 17 are in full production, nine in preproduction and five in concept phase.
The majority of the projects are from four operating groups: Gearbox, Plaion, Saber, and Crystal Dynamics/Eidos. Just to give you some more color, 24 of the games are published internally, 28 are developed internally and 23 are based on owned IPs. 24 are based on established IPs and seven on new IPs. And only six of the AAA games are announced so far.
To conclude, over the coming years, we see a notably strengthening pipeline of AAA releases, which provides a solid base for organic growth and improved free cash flow. The project ROI, the average ROI increased slightly over the second quarter to 2.44. We released six games that fulfill the criteria to be included in the quarter. Two of those reached a clearly positive ROI already in the release quarter.
In particular, Goat Simulator 3 had a positive contribution to ROI in the quarter, while Lets Sing 2023 also performed well. The average remains weighed down by the substantial release of the Saints Row reboot in the most recent quarter. As stated in my initial remarks, we need to be humble and acknowledge the overall ROI performance of our PC/Console games that’s released this financial year has underperformed management expectations. That said, we are confident in clearly improved ROI on new products compared to the last quarters.
Again, Asmodee. We wanted to give some additional color on Asmodee in this deep dive section. We have received some questions from shareholders on Asmodee’s performance and historical figures, which we are happy to share about.
First of all, we are happy with Asmodee’s stable performance in third quarter, both in terms of sales, profits, and cash flows. I’m excited to have Stephane, Muge and the team on board and look forward to see the company continuing to execute on its strategy, including pursuing inorganic growth opportunities.
In many ways, Asmodee has had a similar strategy to Embracer over the years, by combining organic and inorganic growth and onboarding great entrepreneurs and creators. Asmodee did 40 acquisitions in 2014 until 2022, including five acquisitions in 2021, until the time of announcement of joining Embracer Group.
Many of these acquisitions are pertained to board game publishers and digital platforms with high margins as opposed to local distribution companies. Asmodee’s strong publishing and distribution capacity can be used to leverage these assets, and it’s a core part of the company’s strategy.
Although we, as a group, have become more selective on M&A in the past six to 12 months, I’m sure the pace of acquisitions also for Asmodee will again gather pace in the coming years. Asmodee’s business is diverse across activities and geographies, and even with the evolution in the market that we have seen recently with the strong growth in trading card games at the end of third quarter board games represent around 46% of total net sales, of which 70% are owned IPs.
TCGs collectibles and other distributed products represent around 41%, with the remaining 13% coming from Asmodee’s emerging platforms in digital and direct-to-consumer sales.
I will now hand over to Johan for some comments on Asmodee’s financial performance.
Johan Ekstrom
Thank you. So if we look at Asmodee and we compare the reported numbers for 2021 to the adjusted pro forma numbers that was announced at the time of the deal announcement, we can see that on the slide here. The objective of the data provided during the acquisition announcement in December 2021 was to provide the best representation of the current trading of Asmodee at the time of acquisition. And as such, the financial information provided was on a pro forma basis, where you take into account the full 12 months contribution from closed M&A done in the period and also adjusted for nonrecurring items.
If we take a closer look to the pro forma adjustments made, there were EUR 109 million and EUR 38 million at the EBITDA level related to pro forma for M&A closed. These are the 2021 performance of the acquisitions of Board Game Arena, Plan B, Miniature Market, The Island, and Exploding Kittens. Jointly, they had a pro forma adjusted EBITDA of 35% in 2021.
It’s also an adjustment for personnel costs related to acquisitions, which is primarily related to provisions for earn outs on past acquisitions amounting to EUR 13 million. We adjusted another EUR 16 million to reflect the impact of the suspension of additional custom duties on imports into the EU of a number of products, including trading cards originating in the U.S. This amounted to EUR 60 million.
So to sum up, the pro forma adjusted EBITDA of 2021 for Asmodee was SEK 240 million. And we believe that in order to appreciate the underlying performance of the business that was acquired, it is more appropriate to use pro forma adjusted financials where you include the full 12 months performance of companies acquired.
Lars Wingefors
Thank you, Johan. And moving from pro forma numbers to Denmark, and very welcome here to Stockholm, Soren, online.
Soren Lundgaard
Thank you, Lars. Happy to join this. Let’s just dive straight into it. So next slide, please. So 1.5 years ago, we traveled to Karlstad to meet up with Lars in sealing the deal in the acquisition of Ghost Ship. We went there alongside Anton, CEO of Coffee Stain, who we have worked together with all these years and are still working together with, and entered into a new constellation now as a sister company to Coffee Stain under the Embracer Group, and we feel extremely happy with this setup and relationship.
We have been developing Deep Rock Galactic for many years and released so many updates that at this point we were also changing our strategy towards a season release instead. We worked on Season 1 for quite a while and announced it as our biggest update ever, alongside a free battle pass.
Can we take the next slide? Thank you. And it worked really, really well when we released it. As you can see in the graph below, we broke all our records on player numbers and revenue. It surpassed our 1.0 release and paved the way for where we are today with Deep Rock.
Already, two months later, we took advantage of this, on PlayStation Plus deal. We entered into PlayStation Plus and very, very fast, 10 million players claimed the game, started playing, enjoying the new season content, buying the cosmetic DLCs and just had a really good time together. And this propelled the Deep Rock Galactic IP even further into closing into mainstream.
One month later, we released Kickstarter on a board game for Deep Rock Galactic. And this board game, Kickstarter, it reached almost 20,000 backers and EUR 2.5 million, which we later found out was actually — is still the biggest Kickstarter in the Nordics, not just board games, but of course, all things.
The board game has now been produced and is in the hands of fans all over the world rolling out right now as we peak and it’s been really well received. To us, this has proven that we can transcend the IP. We can take it to other medias. In this case, the partnership was with MOOD, a visual arts studio from Copenhagen that we know really well. And we’ll look into more of these partnerships in the future.
So next slide, please. So on this one, in April, we released Season 2 for Deep Rock Galactic. We revisited the robot theme. And it didn’t go just as well as the first one, and we were, of course, a bit disappointed in the numbers. So maybe Deep Rock was going downhill now. But then we’ll look more into the details. And the robot theme was initially in the first season, maybe not the most popular. We also missed out on some promotions on Steam and a few other things. So we said, let’s pull our act together. Let’s do it better. And we did.
So next slide, please. We released Plaguefall, a new theme for Season 3 in November last year. We timed it very well with a promotion on Steam and hyped it in the community. And it broke all our records once again, placing us now squarely in the top 100 most played games on steam where we are still at. And it definitely told us now that as long as we are putting in the effort and are doing the right things with Deep Rock Galactic, this brand can still grow and still has a lot of potential in the future.
Take the next slide, please. So in January, 1 month ago, we released this infographics to the fans. It was an update to one we did two years ago. And as you can see in the graph up in the top left on daily active users, the user base of Deep Rock Galactic just keeps growing. The recognition as a brand, it’s slowly going into mainstream. We’ve crossed 5.5 million units sold across all platforms. Our social media channels are still growing really well. We are 1 of the 10 most active discord servers in the world. Our TikTok channel is exploding, and there’s a lot of fun, and we see a lot of user engagement on the social media channels.
Next slide, please. So meanwhile developing and releasing and promoting Deep Rock Galactic, we’ve been investing. And this is a very different way of investing than the normal Embracer way of acquiring. These are all investments back into the Danish gaming ecosystem, smaller start-ups or companies that need some seed funding to get moving.
They are very different, as you can see as well. One is into the ed tech sector, one is more in the games with Steam and Switch, and the latest one is specializing in VR games. So we’re spreading out and helping these teams as good as we can, both with the investment, but also with advice and support as much as we can.
The goal here is, of course, for them to grow into mature companies. And eventually, if possible, they could be acquired. But we’ll see where that goes. We’ll continue with this strategy moving forward. And then final slide, we have an announcement, if you can take the next one.
So today, we are announcing Ghost Ship Publishing. We are really proud of what we have accomplished with Deep Rock Galactic, and we feel we can share this experience. We need to share this experience with other developers. We want to help other game developers take the same journey as we have taken. This is not a publishing setup where we will publish every game out there. We have set up some specific pillars of focus.
So we will seek out game developers that embrace open development, that are community-driven, and really want to bring their passion products in a personal and real way to the market. And these are often Steam early access games like we had ourselves with Deep Rock Galactic.
The games themselves need to be flexible in game design, so that they are endlessly expandable. The focus here is more on world building than narrative. We want them to be, yes, flexible and open, so we can form them, or the developer can form them as they go along the journey of working together with the community. And they need some deep gameplay systems, so there will be a lot of play time in these games. We believe in games that are played, our games that sell. This is exactly what we see with the Deep Rock Galactic.
And this leads into the final part, the solid business, and the consumer-friendly business models, where we will support and encourage these developers to pursue the same type of model that we have been successful with, where the fans feel us being extremely generous with content, and then they are very generous by playing the game and talking about it and making their friends buy the game and everybody is just happy when you get into this positive loop.
We’ll also work towards having equal partnerships and full transparency with the developers just as we’ve been experiencing with both Coffee Stain Publishing throughout the years.
So that was our deep dive into Ghost Ship, where we are today and what we’re going to do moving forward. We’re still working on Deep Rock Galactic. There will be more announcement, both on Deep Rock Galactic and on the titles for Ghost Ship Publishing in two weeks when we have our 5-year anniversary stream live from the office here, and we will make sure to send out press releases and communications about that event as well. Thank you.
Lars Wingefors
Thank you, Søren. I think we are all super excited and very happy to have you within Embracer Group. And the success you have created with Deep Rock is just amazing. So thank you so much. Thank you for sharing this with us today.
So with that said, that was the deep dive session we had for today. I hope Simon, you have some few remaining Q&A questions perhaps.
Simon Jonsson
Welcome back to the second Q&A session. Thank you, Careen and Søren as well. I want to start off with listening to Careen here. Can we view this as Embracer entering a phase where you try to achieve some more synergies? And can you maybe elaborate a bit more on her position in general?
Lars Wingefors
I would like to highlight — or to start with, Careen is one of the smartest business persons I know in the industry, and I’ve been waiting for her, a few years, to actually join this position. Now she wanted to have a good ending at Google, and they closed down and now it was time to join. Super excited to have her. And she knows the CEOs and many of our games developers, which obviously being very efficient to now join the group.
Now it’s been a critical part of the strategy of the group in the belief of aggregating or adding a lot of fantastic games developers within PC/Console segment. And I believe there is a value for many business partners and industry players within — globally, a higher value on an aggregated basis than you necessarily have from each and every game. And this is what we’re trying to achieve with Careen.
Obviously, there are many other things. We could have other kind of business relationships with industry players, increasing margins and improve marketing and just build a better way of communication into the group and the other way around.
As you know, I’ve been against any kind of centralization and I believe firmly in a decentralized model. But I would like to see Careen here as a middle point on more an operational daily level, on the absolute highest level, working aside myself, Johan, Ian, together with the CEOs to make this, I would say, quite notable relationships and agreements going forward.
Simon Jonsson
Interesting. Could you give us like any kind of indications or hints of what kind of things or synergies or partnerships internally or externally that you could derive from having this group of companies?
Lars Wingefors
But obviously, talking with platforms, if we are able to strengthen our content together against them, we could improve business terms. And there are any different kind of business terms with the industry players. So that’s a very clear synergy. But there is also — over the years, there’s been a number of reach out from very big media companies, tech companies, Asian companies, Chinese companies wanting to do business with the overall Embracer Group. And I’ve been giving them the number to the CEOs or the local sales teams. But now we actually have a coordinating function where there is an interface to do something substantial across all our 11,000 games developers. It’s an enormous opportunity.
But it requires a lot of respect for a decentralized model and for the local management. We need to work together with them to have this working. We will never struck deals with partners that are not aligned with our management teams. You need to dance together.
Simon Jonsson
Sounds good. I should also mention that in a few minutes, we will open up for questions from the telephone conference. So if you have any questions, stay tuned for that. But one more question for me here before.
Turning to the pipeline. Before, you had 25 games scheduled for release — AAA games scheduled for release before March of 2026. Now it’s 19, could you elaborate a bit on what has changed in the pipeline?
Lars Wingefors
Mainly classifications, I would say, in that number moving, but there is also some or a few moving into — in the coming financial year after March 2026, because we had a number of titles in that financial year. And now with what I stated earlier this morning, we need to make sure we have the right quality and planning and everything. So there is a combination of definitions. And for example, a title like Remnant 2, which I think looks amazing, I don’t want to say how gamers or the industry will look, whether it’s a AAA game or not. But for definition reasons, it’s super close to be 100. They are not. So kind of bad luck when you define this here.
Simon Jonsson
All right. So some of those six games could still be in the pipeline and scheduled for release in the same period, but not classified as AAA. Is that correct?
Lars Wingefors
Exactly.
Simon Jonsson
All right.
Lars Wingefors
And hopefully, the sales could be as good as well. So…
Simon Jonsson
Yes.
Lars Wingefors
So this is very much a KPI driven from interest from financial markets to give color on the pipeline. Internally, we don’t talk AAA or not, we talk games.
Simon Jonsson
I guess people got worried that you had canceled some projects or proposed all of them. So it’s good to get some clarification. And on the games in full production, I believe you stated 17, was that correct? Or could — is that the current run rate of games in full production, AAA games in full production? Is that run rate sufficient enough to support the release schedule you have? Or do you think you need to up the number of AAA in full production to deliver on the pipeline in the coming two to three years?
Lars Wingefors
Obviously, there is a very long cycle. You either have a longer time period and have a smaller team or you scale up and down. It really depends on what studio there is and how much external resources. So it’s a very hard question to answer. Then we need to do a deep dive on a very detailed forecast on headcounts and CapEx and other things. Perhaps one day, Simon, not today.
Simon Jonsson
All right. Not even if we simplify it to the CapEx. If the CapEx is sufficient to fund what you have currently or should we expect CapEx to slightly increase?
Lars Wingefors
Well, I want to be clear. Due to our partnership and licensing deals and funding that we expect to close, I think it’s a fair assumption that our CapEx will significantly be lower. I’ll leave it to the analyst to read into that.
Simon Jonsson
Yes. All right. Let’s see if we have any questions from the telephone conference this time.
Unidentified Speaker
We have two analysts on the line. So I’ll just open the lines and check if they want to ask any questions. Rasmus and Nick, do you want to ask any questions?
Nick Dempsey
It’s Nick Dempsey. Can I ask a couple of questions?
Lars Wingefors
Yes.
Nick Dempsey
Brilliant. So the first one. When we look at recent performance from Ubisoft, perhaps the performance of EA outside of a couple of their very largest franchises, it seems that recently, regardless of how well the games are received critically, the small to midsized AAAs are really suffering in terms of the number of units sold, whereas the very largest games, Call of Duty, God of War, are winning share. Those companies I referred to have suggested that relates to the squeezed consumer, but is that something that you recognize in the market? And do you think it relates to this particular moment? Or do you think it is a big picture multiyear structural trend that potentially presents some risks to yourselves? That’s the first question. Second question…
Lars Wingefors
Let’s start with that question, Nick, because I will forget the first question, otherwise. I had too much in my head this morning. So I think I wouldn’t say it’s a structural shift. We actually have been looking into that particular question in detail. And there is a marginal difference if you look on the performance of small and mid-sized titles versus big titles in the third quarter. But I think potentially, and without having full science, because it’s quite hard to have full science in PC/Console because there are so many factors. But one data point we can look at is obviously Destroy All Humans! that were very successful for us during pandemic.
And now the second game came last year. The game is as good or not even better, but it did not perform as good. But there is many factors to that. This release window, how many other games is coming in a similar genre. So I wouldn’t say it’s a big structural shift. We don’t see that. But I think there is more an effect from a very, at least early in the pandemic, aggressive consumption of every game you can get hold of.
Nick Dempsey
Okay. That’s helpful. If I could just go to my second question. Inside Asmodee, you mentioned that trading card games have continued to perform pretty well against a very tough comp, a very strong period last year. When we look forward for Pokemon in particular, is it not inevitable that we have to come off the top of the current spike of interest. And if so, can we expect that in the next couple of quarters?
Lars Wingefors
You mentioned one very valuable business partners, and we have many valuable business partners. And in the respect of them, we are happy to support their distribution and publishing of their products in different markets. But I will leave the assumption of their business and IPs to them, and we are supporting that.
So obviously, we had been excited to see a very good performance in that business segment of TCG last year. And I have not heard anything from Paris that there is a trend going in a different direction at the moment.
Simon Jonsson
There are no more questions at this time, but maybe we should unmute Rasmus to make sure that he doesn’t have any questions. Rasmus, do you have any questions?
Rasmus Engberg
No thanks.
Simon Jonsson
Okay. Okay. Then I hand it over back to you, Lars.
Lars Wingefors
Yes. Thank you, Simon. Perhaps the audience doesn’t mind to leave early today unless you have some final questions from your side, Simon.
Simon Jonsson
No. I could just highlight that from the web, we have a lot of questions surrounding the special review. If there’s any update on that, if a potential spin-off could create any value, that you have assets that could be valued higher separately? Is that something you have any comments on?
Lars Wingefors
No, we don’t really have any new — I think I gave quite extensive color on the special review in the last quarterly. But I want to be clear, the strategy remains the same to back entrepreneurs, now looking at myself as a shareholder, a long-term shareholder, and the promise I’ve given to people, it’s still the same to back entrepreneurs and creators on the long term. I would leave it to the market to do their own analysis on valuations on assets.
Simon Jonsson
All right. We may finish with seeing if there’s any questions from anyone in the audience before we leave off here. Please raise your hand if that is the case, we’ll give you the mic. No questions at this point.
With that said, I think it’s time to round off. So thank you so much, Lars and Johan and all other presenters and the audience for coming as well.
Lars Wingefors
Thank you, Simon.
Johan Ekstrom
Thank you.
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