GAN launches strategic review following FY22 revenue growth
GAN said growth across both its B2B and B2C segments helped revenue increase during its 2022 financial year, while the provider was also able to report a rise in revenue for the final quarter of the year.
With GAN looking to build on this success, the business said it would now launch a strategic review to assess a “range of strategic alternatives” that could improve shareholder value.
While GAN said the intention is to complete the process in a timely fashion, there can be no assurance that the review will result in pursuing or completing any transaction, while no timetable was set for completion of this process.
“As part of our commitment to improving our returns for shareholders, we have launched a formal strategic review process to evaluate options available to hasten our path to better profitability metrics and a more attractive return profile,” GAN chief executive Dermot Smurfit said.
“We hope to complete this process in a timely manner and will certainly provide updates as appropriate.”
Q4
Looking at GAN’s performance last year and beginning with the fourth quarter, revenue in the three months to 31 December 2022 amounted to $36.9m (£29.8m)/€33.8m), up 15.0% on the previous year.
Breaking this down, B2B segment revenue increased 25.9% year-on-year to $14.1m, due to a rise in platform and content licence fee revenue from existing clients and new launches by existing and new customers.
B2C revenue also jumped 18.8% to $22.8m, helped by a 49.0% rise in the number of active customers, with GAN noting a significant increase in the Latin America market.
Turning to costs, operating expenses were 389.0% higher at $182.4m, with this mainly due to a $137.1m non-cash impairment charge. GAN also noted $1.2m in other costs, which left a pre-tax loss of $144.3m, in contrast to the $6.6m loss posted in Q4 2021.
GAN received $3.4m in tax benefits, meaning it ended the quarter with a $147.7m net loss, compared to a $6.9m loss in the previous year. However, adjusted EBITDA loss improved from $6.0m to $400,000.
Full year
As for the full year, revenue in the 12 months to 31 December 2022 was up from $124.2m in 2021 to $141.5m.
B2B revenue climbed 18.4% to $54.0m, with GAN putting this down to a rise in platform and content licence fee revenue from organic growth within the US real-money igaming business.
B2C segment revenue also climbed by 11.3% year-on-year to $87.5m again primarily due to active customer growth in Latin America.
Operating costs jumped 115.3% to $334.0m, mainly as a result of $166.0m in impairment charges, while after also accounting for $1.0m in additional income, pre-tax loss stood at $193.6m, compared to a $30.8m loss in 2021.
GAN received $3.9m in tax benefits, meaning net loss for the year reached $197.5m, in contrast to $30.6m in the previous year. Adjusted EBITDA amounted to $6.0m, up from a $2.8m loss in the 2021 financial year.
“Our fourth quarter continued to show strong B2C KPIs as we grew active customers by nearly 50%, Smurfit said. “We also ended the year with solid momentum in our B2B sports betting business as we announced our partnership to support WynnBet at Encore Boston Harbor and had a highly successful launch last month.
“This marks our third GAN Sports client in the US and we maintain a healthy pipeline of potential future partners for the platform.
“At the same time, it has become apparent to us that the capital requirements to gain market share for initiatives such as SuperRGS as well as in certain competitive markets for sports betting like Ontario, Canada do not provide a path toward achieving an acceptable ROI in a reasonable period of time.
“As such, we have elected to allocate capital away from these endeavours and toward more appropriate growth strategies. Accordingly, we are focused on leaning into the value that GAN Sports has demonstrated thus far and being a market leader in emerging Latin American markets through our B2C operations.”