Acroud records Q1 revenue increase but profits fall
Roughly half, €2.8m, of the revenue total came from Acroud’s igaming affiliate segment, which is 12.5% less than last year. Of this igaming total, €1.6m came from casino revenue, €816,000 was generated from poker, and sports betting contributed €359,000.
The remaining €2.8m of the revenue total came from Acroud’s B2B software services segment, enabled by the acquisition of the PMG Group.
Acroud’s expenses for the quarter totaled €4.8m. External expenses were €3.5m, personnel expenses were up 11.3% to €1.0m, and depreciation and amortisation came to €354,000.
As a result, total earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) was down 17.6% to €1.4m.
Operating profit came to €1.1m, down 31.7% from €1.6m in the first quarter of 2020. Gross profit also saw a 71.1% decrease to €822,000. After accounting for €74,000 worth of tax, net profit for the business amounted to €748,000 for the quarter.
Acroud CEO Robert Andersson said: “When I took over as CEO I expected that it would take around 12 months before we would harvest the initial fruits of the extensive change management work. Therefore it is extra gratifying to see the results for the first quarter confirming this.
“Through the change management work, the original iGaming Affiliation segment now shows growth sequentially, excluding acquisitions.”
2021 has seen multiple business acquisitions for Acroud, including PMG, an unnamed US tipster business and TheGamblingCabin.
Andersson said further acquisitions may still be on the cards, but Acroud now intended to focus more on its core business and is unlikely to acquire at the pace it did over the past six months.
“We will continue to pursue an opportunistic acquisition strategy where we evaluate new potential acquisitions, primarily focusing on SaaS [software as a service] solutions and sports betting, but we will not be as aggressive as the second half of 2020 and the first half of 2021,” he said “Priority will be on organic growth in our base portfolio, integration of completed acquisitions, while we will step by step reduce net indebtedness over time.”