Acroud Announces Q1 2023 Interim Report, Highlights Significant NDC Growth

Acroud, an iGaming operator, has unveiled its interim financial report for the first quarter of 2023. The report outlines substantial growth in New Depositing Customers (NDC), amongst other key financial highlights.

In the first quarter of 2023, the company’s revenue increased to €9.3m (£8m/US$10m) from €7m the previous year, marking a growth of 33%. However, the organic growth saw a decline of -21.7%.

Acroud’s EBITDA for the quarter stood at €2.1m, representing a 6% year-on-year decrease from €2,2m. Nonetheless, the adjusted EBITDA (before considering items affecting comparability) rose by 20% year-on-year to €2,1m from the previous year’s €1.7m.

The company reported a profit after tax of €-67k, in comparison to €1.1m from the same period last year. The adjusted profit after tax (before items affecting comparability and currency effects) was also in negative territory, coming in at €-181k as opposed to €551k from the previous year.

A noteworthy increase was observed in the number of New Depositing Customers (NDC), which rose by 176% to 92,659, compared to 33,538 in the same period last year.

On the personnel front, Acroud announced the appointment of Tricia Vella as the company’s Chief Financial Officer on March 10, 2023. Vella, who has been with Acroud since 2019 and previously served as Head of Finance, brings extensive experience from her seven-year tenure in a big-4 auditing firm.

The interim report highlights a mixed performance for Acroud in Q1 2023, with the company navigating through several financial challenges while successfully expanding its NDC base in the competitive iGaming sector.

CEO Robert Andersson commented on the results, “The first quarter has been very much business as usual while tuning in our new addition of the Media unit. While we had a revenue loss of 7% in group revenue when compared to Q4 2022, we saw a continued growth in NDCs (New Depositing Customers) with a new all-time-high record for any single quarter.

“The decrease in revenue was primarily a result of unfavorable sports results in February. Had it not been for the football results last week of February, we would have delivered growth in revenue and profit respectively. These clusters of unlikely sports results tend to even out over time.

“On the flip side, we are pleased to see that April revenue was EUR 3.6 million, which corresponds to an increase of 51% compared to the same month last year.

“We have been addressing the performance within the Casino SEO business such as focusing much more on the revenue share model. This will over time lead to increased stability in revenue even if it initially hits the top line. The everchanging SEO algorithms is always a challenge and with the rapid AI development, we expect to see players relying on traditional SEO to face tougher times. This is yet another evidence that our strategy to diversify our offer was right as we have made ourselves less dependent and less vulnerable in this area.

“The positive trend of NDCs continued during the quarter where we got a new record of 92,659. I am very pleased with this development as it increases future recurring revenues. This favourable development is the main result of the strong performance in our ‘Paid Media Partnerships’ which we have acquired in the last quarter of 2022.

“Revenues generated from the SaaS business were down by 11% when compared to last quarter and down by 19% when compared to same quarter last year. This decrease is coming from the revenue of the network model, which is highly volatile to the relationship between low and high-margin revenue deals.  Despite this decrease, EBITDA from the SaaS business has increased by 10% over Q4 2022, thanks to better cost control.

“The company’s organization has for some time been recast to a more decentralized model in order to ensure that our subsidiaries continue to be run by the founders.  We also believe that increased decentralization contributes to a positive company culture and to developing new talent within the company.  However, the main overall aim is to become more cost-effective and to allocate resources where we see the best return per euro spent.

“We continue our journey to deliver growth, profitability and shareholder value.

“And with this said, I am very much looking forward to the coming quarters.”