Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Poppy, your call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the OPAP S.A. conference call and live webcast question and answer session to discuss the Q1, 2023 financial results. Please note that a video pre-presentation has been distributed and is also available on the OPAP Investor Relations website. All participants will be in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Jan Karas, CFO of OPAP S.A. Mr. Karas, you may now proceed. Thank you very much. Good evening or good morning, everyone, and welcome in our regular Q1 2023 results conference call. I'm pleased to share with you another set of solid results for OPAP, positively affected by our sound commercial plan and leading to increased retail activity and strong online contribution. We continue to build on the Fast Forward strategy pillars. We just launched opaponline.gr, our new umbrella brand for our iLottery proposition. These make us confident. We are well on track to deliver our 2023 outlook. Hopefully, you had a chance to review the results recorded video that we shared with you earlier today. We will jump directly to our Q&A session. Poppy, over to you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star, followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from the line of Draziotis Stamatios with Eurobank Equities. Please go ahead. Yes. Hello there, and thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple, if I may, please. Firstly, on VLTs, we seem to have returned to levels of daily net win near EUR 40, which is a level seen prior to 2019, i.e., before full deployment of the machines. I'm just wondering, has this been driven by footfall or spending? What, in your view, would be the driver of higher machine performance in the future be? Would it be more players or higher player activity, or maybe machine optimization? That was the first question. Secondly, on online. I'm just wondering, I mean, I know this is a transition period for you, but your own digital platform seems to remain rather subdued in terms of performance. If I'm doing the math correctly, revenues were little changed versus the same quarter last year. Which is the segment, you know, struggling the most? I presume it must be sports. Could you tell us what the experience has been with the migration to the new hub encompassing, you know, all the full product offering and of course, the launch, the experience from the launch of online, you know, these past seven or eight weeks? Thank you. Thank you very much for your questions. I will take them one by one. Starting with the VLTs, your expectation is correct. Going forward, we certainly have ambitions to further grow the activity of players, meaning increasing the active players base, as well as increasing their activity. That is again driven by commercial plans and actions. The VLT replacement, excuse me. The VLT replacement is an important part of it, so we have, at this moment, something around 7,000 machines, replaced, and that's what our customers can enjoy. As you know, our total estate is 25,000, so there is still many to go. That's gonna be helping, but we are also planning further evolution of things like loyalty schemes, the customer journeys, the simplicity of topping up the accounts and machines, digital communication, et cetera. There is quite a lot on our plan, and I don't think I can highlight any specific element of that being the predominant driver of the success. It's a combination of multiple elements, and those that you have mentioned are certainly part of it. I don't think that Q1 results in any way indicate any mid to long-term trends. Our ambition are certainly continuous growth, and it stays that way. Regarding the online, which was your second question, we have... I would like to remind ourselves that we have launched the new sports betting platform in the first week in March, and the new iLottery platform that you could see the screenshots in the presentation in the first week in April, one month later. Certainly, Q1 performance had nothing to do with the introduction of new proposition, and it was only very partially affected by the repositioning of the... Sorry, relaunch of the sports betting or re-replacement of the platform or migration to the new platform. Those moves are something that we now settle... and onboard customers and make sure that everything works perfectly. Obviously, there is we need to wait a couple of months, and with sports betting, certainly wait for the new sports betting season to kick in end of August, beginning of September, to start making judgments and year-over-year comparison as to how the new environments for the customers, the new experiences have impacted our performance. We certainly expect to have a significant impact going forward. As to migrational customers that you have asked about, that is certainly something we can consider a success, both migration from the old sports betting platform to the new sports betting platform went absolutely smooth. We kept all the players on board, and the same went for iLottery platform. Just to remind ourselves that it was not a change of platform, the technical solution is still the same. It was expansion of the game portfolio and introduction of new interfaces, but also this change went really smooth. Thank you for your questions. Thank you very much. Just with a follow-up on regarding your experience since the launch of Online KINO, has the game been performing in sync with your expectations, or is it too early to say? So far it's performing in sync with our expectations, but it's certainly very too soon to make conclusions, 'cause don't forget, we didn't go yet for massive communication and certainly not ATL. At this moment, this was more onboarding of the existing base, and there, the early numbers are quite encouraging in terms of how much the customers enjoy playing multiple games and not just Joker as in the past. That's certainly a good one. However, it's too early to make conclusions 'cause the opportunity is not only in upselling the ex joker.gr customers, the opportunity is to go, of course, much bigger than that and bring more people to online and bring also completely new customers to our active base. That remains to be seen once the communication kicks in. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of Russell Pointon with Edison. Please go ahead. Hello all. I have three questions. My first one is, just going back to that previous question on your, on OPAP's own online business. You've had good growth in active users, but the spend is pretty flat, I mean, which implies lower spend per active. Is that a matter of reducing frequency or is it a matter of reducing spend per, I don't know, visit? My second question, I mean, broadly, you speak about better engagement with players as you've invested, but a key part of the investment was also to shift the demographics of the businesses a bit. You know, have more younger players, more females. Could you just give an update on what you've seen so far on the most recent launches? My final question is on cash flow. I appreciate that quarterly cash flow is, can be a bit volatile. Could you just give some detail on the working capital outflow and the cash tax, please? Thank you. Okay. Good afternoon from Pavel Mucha. I'll start with the last question on the cash flow. It's there is nothing unusual really, in cash flow. There is a movement compared to the same quarter last year in the in the payables. Basically, it's, uh, it's just different phasing of payments to our vendors. There is nothing unusual. In terms of the income taxes paid, it's again, only just phasing how we pay the advanced payments during the year and final final settlement. Obviously, you have to bear in mind that, because of the performance, during 2021, the final tax, corporate tax liability for 2021, which, was much lower than what we had, for 2022 following the lockdown, and that then impacts the advanced payments, for corporate tax and final settlement. It's, I would say, phasing of the payment of the income taxes. If that's all from you, Pavel, I will cover the other questions regarding the activity of players and their spend. For sports betting, and for our iLottery platform, it was quite similar. Obviously, the early weeks were totally focused on ensuring we are not losing any customers that we had before, and we are focusing on absolutely smooth customer experience on the new platform. That was the focus of Q1 and for the iLottery and sports betting platform, it continues to be focused also throughout April, just to make sure we offer the best customer experience possible before we go out with ATL communication and mass market focused acquisitions. With that also, I really would like to abstain from any early judgments of the performance and impacts of any of the new platforms and or propositions on overall performance. Don't forget that when we grow, we keep growing, you are getting into different segments of customers with different behaviors, with different spends. Our ambition is always the same: maximize the active players base, and we have no smaller target than continuously grow across all of our online verticals, the number of active players. Second, maximize the spend within the vertical and or across the verticals. Obviously, always respecting the competitive law limitations and the wall that we have between the lottery world and the sports betting world. Okay. Could, I mean, could you provide any demographic detail in terms of, you know, whether you're managing to set your customer base younger and more female? This is a younger audience. Well, the slightly different answer is per vertical. If I will be speaking about sports betting, it's sports betting fans is our target group. There is more than 1.6 million players in Greece. We wanna be relevant to all of them. The age groups, when you look at the publicly available statistics, it is really going across all age groups. There, our focus is for all of them, and I think we are successfully and, well, I would say with increasing success, 'cause we are certainly far from where our ambitions lie, we address those segments. When it comes to casino, that's a bit, traditional segment that we were trying to make more relevant to the younger audiences with the introduction of casino games vertical. It has helped us. We have increased our presence in the younger segment, so I'm referring to 21-35. Again, here, it's not the end of the journey. That's a continuous case, and we are always working on further enhancements of the propositions. I think really the casino games vertical is a nice example of innovation and attracting new audiences, especially among the youth. When it comes to iLottery, it's quite a different story because while casino and sports betting have their specific audiences, the iLottery should be really the mass market proposition. With that, it absolutely must be relevant also to women and younger audiences. That's why what you will see coming in the future are further enhancement towards the entertainment element, a social element. To give you an example, chats among the people, different rewards, loyalty, connecting, collecting points, free games, et cetera. Just think of really an entertainment hub, where there should be something for everyone to have couple of minutes a day fun, just to break out of the day and play for some time and enjoy. That is our ambition, and with that, we will follow our commercial plans to deliver that. Hope that helped? Yeah, that's great. Thank you. You're welcome. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Once again, to register for a question, please press star one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Reuben Scherzer with TimesSquare Capital Management. Please go ahead. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. Yes. Okay, great. Hi, this is Reuben Scherzer at TimesSquare Capital Management, New York. Thank you for taking my question. Congratulations on a strong Q1 results. On the back of that coin, I'm curious, based on the initial guidance for the year, what kind of circumstances would have to occur for OPAP to raise guidance for the year 2023, given the strong start of the year? Thank you very much for your question. Yes, well, thank you for your kind words. We are indeed satisfied with our solid performance in Q1. It was a good start of the year, and certainly, we are optimistic for the remaining of 2023, likewise. Since we have provided the outlook for the year just two months ago, currently, we are sticking with this outlook, and I don't have any new updates for you on that front. That outlook stands, and we remain certainly confident that we are well on track to deliver on this target. Just to repeat for the whole audience, the EBITDA is expected to be within the range of EUR 740-EUR 760. In any case, we will come back to you on that with an update, and you should expect that, post-summer, along with our Q2 results. I think that would be a good time to be more specific on the expectations on any results. Okay, thank you for that detail. You're welcome. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Osman Memisoglu with Ambrosia Capital. Please go ahead. Hi, thank you very much for your time and presentation. Just following up on the previous questions, you've given us quite a bit of detail on the product side. More on the demand side, customer spending, I guess a bit of macro sentiment from your perspective, how was Q1, and how are you seeing Q2 so far? Any color and outlook given the recent developments? Thank you. Okay. Well, macro is moving in the right direction in Greece. On across all metrics, things are improving compared to the last year, namely, inflation is easing. I would say the recent elections provide also some optimism. I would say there is a good mood, which we see across the whole retail industry in Greece. People do spend more, and we see basically the entertainment wallet of the players, of the customers generally increasing. From our tracking results, we've seen constant increase really since the autumn last year, and it continues also beyond Q1 into April and May. I would say on in this respect, and also expecting another record tourist season, given the bookings and progress so far, I think on macro front and the whole retail and us being affordable entertainment venues, we see the summer and Q2 also quite optimistic. Thank you. Thank you very much. Once again, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Karan Puri with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi, congratulations on the strong set of results, everyone. Just had a question on the growth profile of your core products, numerical lotteries and retail betting. I mean, the 10%, 11% growth was very, very strong, obviously underpinned by, you know, some help from Covid comps as well, and a strong retail momentum. Going forward, Q2 onwards, is it fair to assume a deceleration in growth going forward? When do you sort of see it getting back to the low single-digit growth that you've historically sort of guided on for that segment? I assume you are referring to year-over-year growth of the given quarter, right? Yes. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I don't like to forecast too much on deceleration of our success. That remains to be seen. We always aim high, and I think we are lately quite successful with engaging players, 'cause we have people in Q1, as we have seen in the deck, reaching some very high numbers in terms of activity players, activity of players, and that across all the different verticals. We have some cards in our sleeves going forward to further trigger activity of players. I certainly don't aim for anything less than continuation. At the same time, putting aside ambitious CEO trends, we should see single digit growth comparison quarter-on-quarter going forward as well. How much we will succeed to go to double-digit range remains to be seen. Don't forget that there are still some macroeconomic question marks ahead of us, like the final results of the political elections that seem to be hopefully on a good track, but it's still not closed. We have a touristic season ahead of us, which again, seems to be on a good track, but far from conclusive as to where it's gonna and how it's gonna end up. We have some interesting forecasts on weather, that possible tropical high weathers might have an influence and impact on people going out and spending time outside of our store. There is quite a lot of things that can influence how the rest of the year will go, not just default GDP or our encouraging Q1 performance. I really would like to abstain from speculation and come back to my statement that I said before, that we will hopefully give you a much better insight as to how the year will end with the Q2 results. Awesome. Thank you so much. To register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Constantinos Zouzoulas with AXIA Ventures. Please go ahead. Thank you. A couple of years ago, if I'm not mistaken, we have discussed about the prospects of online market in Greece. Fast-forward two years, how do you see the market evolving? Do you believe that the trends that you were discussing the or thinking, were conservative or aggressive? Thank you. I'm sorry, because I cannot refer to optimistic or conservative statement as to since I'm not sure to exactly what data from a couple of years back you're referring to. When it comes to the future, our expectation continues to be some healthy growth of online at around 10% year-over-year rate. While certainly protecting our business on the retail side, that is also what we are seeing in the European benchmarks of other jurisdictions that are more advanced than OPAP on the lottery online side. Having said that, similar to my statement before, there is quite a few possible interesting opportunities that we may be able to explore, like how much we will manage to attract new players to our iLottery proposition, or new generation players that are possibly not with us today. Likewise, as always, there might be some unpleasant surprises along the way in terms of constantly evolving customer preferences as to what they want and what they don't want, and what they consider entertainment that they want to pay for. While generally, a very diverse array of opportunities and challenges ahead of us, coming back to my original statement, we don't expect to be anywhere else than of around at least 10% growth year-over-year for our online business. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Once again, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Virendra Chauhan with AlphaValue. Please go ahead. Good afternoon, Jan and Pavel. Quick question on the online business, specifically, iLottery. I'm sorry if you have addressed this during the Q&A. I had some trouble getting on the call. The iLottery business was down about 2% in Q1, and coming on the back of very strong performance towards the end of last year, if I remember correctly. My question is this a reflection of the transitional period that you had when you were awaiting the launch of the new platform, and hence, a less marketing intensity, if I could term it that way? Is there anything else at play? It's moved from, I think, 20% plus growth in Q4 to about a decline in Q1. Can you just clarify that for me? Thank you. Thank you very much for your question. The answer is very simple. The explanation is very simple, that is the... Now I can say, think of the past, and there is very high dependency on the jackpot. Since it was a Joker.gr only, it was all about, do we have a high jackpot or not? That is, so it had nothing to do with the new platform, 'cause that has been launched, at the beginning of April. That kind of dependency is exactly one of the things we are trying to change with the introduction of the whole iLottery portfolio and everything that is coming going forward, which should be much more about creating a habit of people coming on a regular basis and spending few minutes a day, having some fun, rather than praying and waiting for jackpots. It remains to be seen how successful we will be on our ambition, but I'm optimistic on that front. Okay. If I understand correctly, you're saying that comparable had a higher jackpot-driven business last year, and now that's the reason for this drop in business, right? We didn't mention about jackpot yet. I'm not sure I understood the question, but in terms of what we always do, if that is your question, what we always do, we are looking at performance in comparison to the similar jackpot in the past, and on that front, we are not seeing any decline, on the contrary, so if that's what you were asking. Okay. Yeah, perfect. I was looking for some kind of underlying growth in the business, and I think that's clear. Thank you. Thank you very much. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. As a final reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to Mr. Karas for any closing comments. Thank you. Thank you very much, Poppy, and thank you very much all for being with us today, and thank you very much for your question. It's beautiful that at this moment, I can wish you to enjoy a great summer, and we will be looking forward to talking to you again in September for our Q2 2023 results, where I'm sure we will have another set of exciting news for you. Thank you very much. Have a great day and great summer. Bye-bye. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a good afternoon.