Good morning. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the Lottomatica Group's full year 2023 results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Guglielmo Angelozzi, CEO of Lottomatica. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, operator. Good morning, everybody. So let me start this meeting with a summary of 2023. We are page three of the presentation. It's been an exceptional year for our group. We've improved our leadership positions, sorry, across all segments and all brands. We've grown organically. We've taken significant market share increase in the online business, quarter after quarter for five quarters in a row. We've done significant M&A through the signing of the SKS deal, and we've executed bolt-on. All this has resulted in exceeding the expectations set at IPO and with subsequent upgraded guidance. In terms of EBITDA, as we have achieved EUR 596 million normalized EBITDA. You may remember but that we always talk in the guidance about normalized EBITDA. This is normalized by sports payout because we believe that's the best way to look at the fundamentals of the business. Payout is volatile, but it's stable in the medium term. So you look at that when you want to understand the business. And in any case, EUR 580 million actual EBITDA, which falls nicely, in any case, within the upgraded guidance. We set today the guidance for 2024. We'll talk about this in a few minutes. Let's go to the next page. We are taking this occasion, which is the first time we have full year results, after the IPO, to make a kind of postmortem. So what did we say at IPO or with the upgraded guidance, and what is the situation today? So did we deliver or not? Did we say something which matched expectations also on the broader industry or not? So the first point we discussed was about online organic growth. We gave in the prospectus our view so that the market would grow 15%. Actually, that's what's happened, basically, whether you look at the actual or at normalized payout. We said that we would grow in line with the market, so we didn't take any commitment on market share increase, and we deliver substantially better in that respect. We've grown 4x faster than the market. We've taken 3.7 points of market share in online, going from 18% in Q4 2024 to 21.7% in the last quarter of 2023. And, as I mentioned before, this has been consistent throughout the quarters. The four quarters of 2023 marks the fifth quarter in a row of market share increase in online. This results in a business mix in terms of EBITDA, which is better than the one we committed to at the IPO, with online representing 52% instead of 46% of our group EBITDA. Next page, page number 4, we also, you know, made a few important statements at IPO. We said that a key part of our growth strategy would have been in bolt-ons and in other growth initiatives like the Project POS. And at a certain point during the year, we mentioned 15-year EUR 50 million incremental EBITDA from Project POS, and we said in general that we had a pipeline of eligible bolt-on targets. We confirmed the contribution of Project POS, so we're fully delivering on that. And we have EUR 50 million adjusted EBITDA in 2024, coming from these. EUR 8 million of these are already reflected in 2023. We said that we would, you know, do M&A, and we did it pretty, pretty fast with the acquisition of SKS, a major player in the Italian market, especially in the online segment with a component of omnichannel, which now we are eager to close and start working with. In terms of net profit, that's higher than adjusted net profit than the expected than the expected value. So we stand at EUR 260.6 million. Very important regulation. There was, you may remember, quite some rumor at the time of the IPO and also after that in terms of risks of tax increases in the budget law, how the reform of the sector would look like. We were pretty bullish on this. We like the Italian regulation within the environment is balanced and constructive. In the end, you know, no tax changes in the budget law framework for the law decree, which is the framework for the reform of the gaming sector, has been approved in August, which is very constructive. Even better, specific part of this has been already implemented, which is the part regarding the online reform, which has been approved by the government in December. And, you know, you will know the terms. We can discuss in the Q&A. It's clearly very positive for the sector and for us. It drives the sector to a better level. Now it's just in the final phase of the parliament consultation process to get finalized and approved in the final form by the government. So as we had anticipated, a constructive, balanced, positive approach from the regulator. Capital structure, Laurence will comment on that. We're fully before the acquisition, fully in line with the, with the guidance we provided, and we have a better maturity profile of our bonds, much better maturity profile. So we delivered, we delivered, pretty well compared to what we said at IPO. Let's come at the summary. When it comes to the guidance, page number 5, what we said at IPO, we revised it upwards in July. And where do we stand today? We have done better. As we said, you know, we always talk about EBITDA with normalized payout because that's the way we look at the business. You know, there's volatility, as we'll see in a second, but you know, on the medium term, everything is absolutely stable. So we have beaten both the guidance at IPO and the revised guidance. Even when we look at the actual, notwithstanding a pretty bad payout for the market in 2023, we stay in a nice spot compared to the guidance. And 52% is online. In terms of CAPEX, we are bang in line with the numbers that we gave at the time of the guidance. So we're very satisfied about this. Now, let's get into business. We want to take this occasion to deep dive more than we usually do on some business dynamics. As I said, it's the first yearly results after the IPO. We think it's worth spending a little more time on some business-related topics. Let's start with the payout. As you know, 2023 has been kind of challenging or, some say, customer-friendly in terms of payout for sports betting. You can see in the graph, up in the slide, the last eight years. So it's the monthly payout for the entire Italian market. Sports betting retail, actually, online is much less volatile, because you have more single bets. That's clear, that's the main reason. So we look at, in this case, retail betting payout for the Italian market in the last eight years. And you can see what has basically caused the impact, 1.6 points compared to the Normalized Payout is October. You see the outlier with the red circle. Actually, you know, when you look at the market, there's no clear that it's basically stable. It's ups and downs, but it's in a normative bandwidth. There's no drift. It's stable on the eight years. It's stable on the three years. But there are moments where the payout exceeds the bandwidth, and then, you know, years or months which can be particularly challenging. It has happened even worse. When you go in the transition from 2016 to 2017, you find four months over in excess of the high payout in excess of the bandwidth. But the important thing is the shape of the curve. As you can see, it's flat, basically, so it's normal volatility of the business. That's why we say if you want to understand the fundamentals of the business, you have to look at the normalized payout. And let's get to that for Lottomatica. We've been very clear and transparent. We gave all the information quarter by quarter on this also because they are public in the end, but, you know, it's worth focusing on them. On the left, you find the sports betting retail payout by quarter for Lottomatica. So it's a recap, and then you find the online. Let's start with the online. Online is bang in line with the normalized payout. 86.4% is the normalized payout, and 86.4% is the actual. That's because, as I said, there is less volatility in online as you would have more live in play and more single bets. That's basically the reason. On the left side, you see the sports betting retail payout. Very good start of the year. We always said, "Just don't take it, because payout goes up and down." The average of the year is 1.6 point above the normalized payout, basically because of October. Since one point equates to circa EUR 10 million of adjusted EBITDA on retail, then this means the EUR 60 million difference, temporary difference in the EBITDA 580 vis-à-vis EUR 596 million. Let's get to the next page, page number seven. Let's talk about one of the other key points, our performance in competitive terms in online. This is a summary of the year, quarter by quarter, actually starting from the last quarter of 2022 so that we can compare it with the last quarter of 2023. And you can see that there is an increase, quarter by quarter. So it's a material improvement when you look at over a one-year period, but it's also consistent. When you look at in terms of single brands, Goldbet, Lottomatica, and BetFlag, we have the best improvement for each of the brands. So it's a matter of portfolio, but it's also a matter of relative improvement of each of the brands. So we are very happy about these. And that's why on the next page, page 8, we want to talk a little bit about what's driving this improvement. So what is the source of our improving competitive position, what we call the Lottomatica advantage that you see represented in this chart? It's basically four pillars. It's the omnichannel approach and the way we do omnichannel. You can do omnichannel in many ways. It's our multi-brand, which means that we don't simply have several brands. We manage a portfolio of brands, which is a different story. We have proprietary tech, which has been our big strategic decision a few years ago, and like, it's really paying off. This in conjunction with product, it's an enabler for product, drives a lot of value. We are data-centric. You will see what this means, but it means, you know, really knowing your customers and doing the best things you can do in terms of serving the customer and acquiring the customers. The different colors are not only for aesthetic reasons, but because we we're trying to represent that some of these things are more structural, so they have very low replicability. Others have medium replicability. Clearly, omnichannel is very low replicability. You know, you have to set up the model, the network, in a certain way. It's very hard to replicate. slightly less so, but in any case, very much non-replicable, very, very hardly replicable is the multi-brand approach in the first place because you have to have multi-brands, and then you have to manage that as a portfolio. Tech, you can always improve. Competitors can always improve on tech, but it takes time, and it's not straightforward. And of course, then data-centricity, it's a differentiator, but it's, it has a, a lower structural level of, higher structural level of, replicability. Now, let's go and see item by item what this means starting from the omnichannel, which is page number nine. We've said this in the past. We just wanted to refresh and focus the attention. Omnichannel means that you have the most valuable clients in the market. The omnichannel clients will have a higher lifetime value because they have higher ARPU than pure online clients, and they are more loyal. So you have higher retention because you serve them better regardless of the channel. That's basically what it is. You also have higher cross-sell. Once you have a client online through the omnichannel, those clients tend to be more multi-product. So you're usually able to do more cross-sell and work better on the shared wallet. And it positions us to exploit the channel evolution, the transition, the gradual transition from retail gaming to online gaming, which is an incredible source of value if you consider the size, especially in gaming retail, the size of gaming retail and the size of the gaming market. And that's why next page, page 10, we have invested so much in the omnichannel within the especially within the specialized distribution, both in sports, which is which has been there since many years. We have the largest footprint in sports. We have a very good conversion to online of the retail customers, even the specialist channel. And, you know, Goldbet was one of the best-in-class. Better, which is one of the brands we acquired for IGT, was less focused on these, but you can see the incidence, the increased incidence of the omnichannel, for example, in the Better brand after we acquired it and we migrated it onto our technology stack. So we worked on that, on the sports franchise, on the various brands. And we've set up a model for online for gaming omnichannel, iGaming omnichannel. As I said, there's a huge amount of value. The business model is different. We can leverage on our directly owned gaming halls, which represent a very big portion, not of the numbers of our gaming halls, but of the value of our gaming halls. You can see that, this is really worked. We're cracking the model, and there, there's more to come. This is a big opportunity. On the next page, just a quick overview on the multi-brand. We've shown this slide other times. You can position your brands according to different dimensions. Our brands cover different segments of cores of players, which helps us maximize the customer coverage with a dedicated brand. It also helps us improving the marketing investments because you can fine-tune that according to the brand, to the cohort of customer, to the period of the year. You're better off in doing cross-fertilization. If there is one good thing that you do with one brand, you can move it to the other brand, especially on those cases where you are already integrated on the back end, which is allowed by our technology. You can work much better on the shared wallet and on targeting and increasing the number of players. You can see the numbers, the results, some data points in the next page on this to demonstrate this point, page number 12. On the graph, on the right, on the left, you can see an example, two brands, Goldbet and Lottomatica, different positions, different elective cohorts of customers. And as you can see, they, you know, you optimize your marketing spend, because in some periods of the year where sports is stronger because of the calendar of events, you put more focus on Goldbet, and in other periods, you will focus more on Lottomatica, for the rest of the portfolio of the portfolio of games. Cross-fertilization, it seems like a generic word, but we have plenty of examples of successfully doing that from the virtual betting of Goldbet, which has been launched on BetFlag, the enrichment of the offer of Goldbet, coming from the experience of BetFlag. So that we launched 1,000 new slot titles only in 2023, best practices in marketing and CRM capabilities. And you have a couple of examples of what this means, like with numbers. You can see the change in performance of, for example, the virtual betting of BetFlag once we leveraged the product that we had already in the group and applied that to the BetFlag customer base. Page number 14, just one slide for but this is one really of the key points. And there are different approaches in these. We have chosen, when it was appropriate to, like, leverage to internalize and leverage on the strategic points, on the strategic components, and leverage our technology stack across the brands. This has several effects. Scalability, from 2017 to 2023, and there are, you know, there's a big increase in volumes, which translates into an increase in revenues, but it doesn't translate proportionally into an increase of cost. So this means scale benefit. Efficiency. There's an example where you have, on the bar on the left, the total expenditure on IT, both CapEx and OpEx on revenues. We don't put the percentage because it's sensitive, but we put the relative terms. Of course, when we bought IGT and we had everything together, you know, we had quite a sizable cost base, then we worked on that with the integration, which was allowed by the fact that we have one platform, and we cut by half basically the ratio of IT expenditure over revenues having at the same time a very efficient and flexible infrastructure. Time to market. We've been first to launch a bunch of innovations in the market, but also cutting-edge technology. We call the setup that we did between the data lake and all the infrastructure around our artificial intelligence tool Lottomatica Brainwave, and it's already applied throughout the company in improving trading management with ticket acceptance, prediction of the risk profile of the players, improving acquisition, improving customer care, improving logistics. These are just a few examples, which span from support functions to core business activities. But really, the way we set up our technology and we invested in cutting-edge opportunities, especially in artificial intelligence, have allowed us to bring improvements in terms of efficacy and efficiency throughout the company and throughout every single process. And we're getting into production more and more use cases. The pipeline for 2024 is really very strong on this point. Last but not least, before we come to the 2024 outlook is data-centricity. Again, not just a slogan, but strong commitment in developing tools for customer segmentations. We have predictive models for churn and customer lifetime value, which are artificial intelligence-based. This enables microsegmentation, which allows us to do very effective campaigns. And, you know, the numbers speak for themselves. At the same time, this capability has allowed us—these are just the three main examples—allowed us to improve, optimize the spend in acquisition through affiliations, again, through very advanced artificial intelligence models, which allow us to understand if an affiliate is profitable, is bringing us good stuff and putting competition affiliates. And we have doubled affiliate profitability compared to the previous year. Also, retention, which goes through the effectiveness of the marketing campaigns. We've set up procedures and tools so that we basically work through a massive test-and-learn approach. We test campaigns. We learn. We put that in the library, and that gets improvement, improving how the system learns. And we've increased retention by five points in the period. These are just examples, but to show you, you know, what's really underneath that systematic sequence of market share improvement throughout the quarters. Now, let's get into 2024. What do we have to do in 2024? We have to continue growing organically. Fantastic market, strong demand. We have all the assets. We have to continue to leverage these assets, the Lottomatica advantage to drive organic growth. There are some specific actions that we're doing, to exploit some synergies, coming from still the BetFlag acquisition in terms of sourceable product and also some technology innovation. But long story short is that, there is, still a strong, growing market, and, we have, as I've shown, the model to capture, growth in that. Omnichannel continues to be a priority, especially on, the gaming side. Bolt-ons. The market is fragmented. We'll continue to do, to execute on our, bolt-on, strategy, especially supported, by the, these, reassuring, clarity on regulation. And of course, we will focus on, the implementation of synergies on, SKS. We continue our commitment to ESG as we've always done. Let's go with the last page of my section, and then I hand it over to Laurence. Page number 17, the guidance and the dividend payment. The guidance is without SKS and the related synergies for a simple reason. It's not closed yet. The deal is not closed. After we close it, we'll come back to you with a revised guidance, which includes also SKS. Closing is expected to happen in H1 2024. So now, let's focus on like-for-like perimeter, which is the Lottomatica Group. Revenues, we expect EUR 1.845 billion. Again, normalized payout, which doesn't change compared to last year, as the average on the three years is stable. Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 625 million-EUR 645 million, assuming roughly 53% of contribution from online. In terms of cash flow, the recurring CapEx are roughly EUR 70 million-EUR 75 million. Concession CapEx is pretty much about mathematics. The retail ones is the prorogation regime, which was established a couple of years ago. So it's just the mathematics of that. We are planning at the moment to take four online concessions for our brands, which means EUR 16 million, if this happens in 2024 and then the second tranche in 2025. We will have the fair consideration of EUR 89 million coming from the BetFlag earnout and Goldbet, plus a small tail of other deals that we've done in the past. And then coming to growth, we expect to allocate EUR 30 million-EUR 50 million, EUR 20 million of which is carryover from 2023, which is going to materialize in 2024, and then EUR 10 million-EUR 30 million of potential opportunities for bolt-ons and other similar growth initiatives. with these, and with the results that we're announcing today, we are going to propose a dividend, in line with 30% of adjusted net profit, in accordance with the group dividend policy, which means a total dividend payment of EUR 65.4 million or EUR 0.26 per share. Now, Laurence, please. Thank you, Guglielmo. Moving on to page 19, we can say that this has been a year of solid double-digit growth, and Q4 has been no exception. Revenue was up, for the full year, by 12% year-on-year, exceeding the EUR 1.6 billion mark. Q4 growth also was, in terms of revenues, up 12%. Growth in EBITDA for full year was also very strong and stronger, and revenues up 17%, again, driven by the very strong performance of online, which has also higher margin. Had it not been for the payout impact, or that we had seen in October, the comparable growth would have been +19%. In Q4, we have seen an acceleration of the growth in, in EBITDA, up 22%, again, thanks to the continued strong performance in, in online and also the effect of the bolt-on acquisitions that, started coming in, in, in the quarter. Moving on to the next page on financial highlights, so you can see the, the, the split by business. At a revenue level, we've seen online growth 33% year-on-year. Again, these are, these are like-for-like numbers. 8% in sports franchise, and 2% in gaming franchise. If you look at it at an EBITDA level, online EBITDA, you know, you know, grew by 30% and exceeded now the EUR 300 million mark on an annual basis. Sports franchise was flat. Again, this, if it had not been for the impact of the payout, the growth would have been basically double-digit if we would normalize for the payout. Gaming franchise was also had good growth, again, thanks to the bolt-ons distribution, insourcing, as well as lower utility cost experience versus the fourth quarter of 2022. Moving on to page 21, the operating cash flow. Again, here, as Guglielmo showed at the beginning of the presentation, the CapEx profile is pretty much in line with what we had guided initially. We have now paid EUR 66 million of recurring CapEx, EUR 45 million of concession CapEx, and EUR 34 million of growth CapEx, which include the Project POS and as well as bolt-ons. If you look at the operating on the right-hand side, the operating cash flow, we closed the year at EUR 470 million of operating cash flow versus 391 in fiscal year 2022. Just one thing to note is that in 2022, clearly, we had lower concession CapEx of EUR 10 million as we had prepaid a number of concessions. And therefore, if we were to normalize that, the growth versus of 470 versus the 2022 normalized for the same concession CapEx levels would have been higher than 30%. Moving to page 22, and here you can see a just quick walkthrough of the net financial debt from the third quarter to the end of year. So we had adjusted EBITDA of EUR 1,454 million, net working capital changes of EUR 6 million, taxes paid of EUR 38 million. This is the second account that we pay for, our corporate taxes, including IRES and IRAP that you pay in November. CapEx of EUR 40 million, financial expenses and leases of EUR 37 million, and other of EUR 34 million. These other also include non-recurring, M&A costs as well as non-recurring financing costs. All in all, we closed the year with a leverage level of 2.2. Returns run rate Adjusted EBITDA, where we factor in the run rate as well, the impact of the bolt-ons and the distribution insourcing we carried out throughout the year. Thank you. This is Alice, operator. You can open for Q&As. Thank you. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask you to use the handset when asking questions. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. We will pause for a moment as participants are joining the queue. The first question is from Rowland Clark, James from Barclays. Please go ahead. Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my questions. My first is on your online share gains, which obviously is a very impressive historical performance. I just wondered how you see your share gains playing out from here, and perhaps you could tie in any comments you have around where you are on the product roadmap. And a sort of related question to that would be, has BetFlag now been integrated onto the sports betting tech stack of the rest of the brands? That's my first question. Secondly, on expansion, you've just done a very big deal, getting SKS365, which is obviously going to complete soon. That puts you in pole position in Italy. So how do you see the opportunity for further consolidation within online in Italy versus expansion outside of Italy? So where are your priorities in that regard? Finally, my final question is on the LTV numbers you provided in the slides. You said in the slides that the LTV of omnichannel customers is 3.6x that of online only. That number was 3x back at IPO. I just wondered if you could perhaps provide some color on what's driving higher LTVs of the omnichannel customers you have today. Are they more revenue-generative than they used to be, for example? Any color you can give us there would be really helpful. Thank you. Hi, James. This is Guglielmo. Thanks for your question. Let me start from the market shares. You know, it's clear you we never, never taken a commitment, on this. What we do is we focus on doing what we believe are, the right things to do, according to the model, that I've described. We have, and we are executing on a very rich pipeline, on each of those, pillars, in terms of product innovation, technology, engagement, of players, the improvement, which I mentioned on the omnichannel, product, the better management of, the portfolio of the brands. So we are, committed. We want to, we think there is all the room to continue doing very well in terms of market share, also in the coming quarters in the sense that, you know, we're still not at the point where we would like to be, and we continue to be very focused. Also consider that, maybe earlier, maybe later, but the new setup for the online regulation is calling for additional consolidation. That's pretty much clear. So, there is an additional opportunity, compared to the ones that we've seen so far, which is leveraging this new type of regulatory framework to, and we have specific projects on this, and I'll address as a part of the answer to your last questions. So, long story short, you know, we're not committing to any specific number, but we are totally focused on continuing to improve our market share position through the initiatives that I mentioned before. On the second point of BetFlag, we are doing exactly what we said in the last quarters. That's where we stand. So we said, number one, the first integration has been on the organizational point of view, clearly, and on the management of the brand within the portfolio. In terms of technology, we said step one is going to be the step one was actually step zero was the virtual betting, which we have done very successfully. Step two was the integration of the sports book, which we have already, I think, given a date, which is H1 this year. So the integration will be ready for the new championship. It's actually up and running. It's the project is ongoing. And then the last phase will be on the iGaming side. The reason why we took a different approach, the final solution is always the same. We took a different approach than other times is because BetFlag has a very rich portfolio of games, and it makes business sense to first integrate the games as I mentioned. We have had a strong acceleration in terms of number of games on the rest of the Lottomatica Group side leveraging on BetFlag. And then after that, we are ready to make the last move. So to answer your question on BetFlag, the point is that there is more to come. There is some still BetFlag is doing great. It's doing very well. It's doing even better within the group today, but there is still unlocked potential, which is coming from these actions. In terms of expansion, Italy vis-à-vis outside international, look, the first point is we are looking forward to close SKS and then to make sure that everything is well set up and the integration and the synergies come out quickly. So that's our responsibility towards our shareholders. We spend money. We have to make sure these have been spent well like all the other times. So we'll focus on that. We do not envisage anything different than the many other acquisitions of this type that we have done, but we want to make sure, first of all, that is all taken care of with the kickoff of all the integration activities once we receive the, once we do the closing. Then, Italy is going to be a fantastic market on the bolt-on side. When we look at the bolt-ons, we're not talking about acquisition of targets which will require an enormous large amount of resources like SKS. We're talking about the market still being fragmented, the regulation in favor of concentration, a consolidation, an improvement of the quality of the players. And we will continue to play a role there, if possible, even accelerating that as opportunities arise. And this is not in contrast with us looking at international expansions in the future at the following conditions. First, we have to be in the right spot in terms of balance sheet. We keep our financial discipline. We always said that. So we will do it, and that's why I talked about the integration of BetFlag of SKS and the synergies. So that's the first point. The second point is it's going to be B2C. We do not have in mind anything different in terms of business model with a focus on the business that we already manage well. And it's going to be Europe, regulated. But, you know, that's a vision. That's the strategy. Now, let's keep focused. We keep being focused on, let's make sure the returns of SKS are what we expect them to be. And that's our key priority. And let's make sure we exploit every possible opportunity which comes, you know, we believe a very, very interesting and very accretive price and not anything relevant in terms of absolute amounts from the Italian markets. But for sure, at a certain point, at the proper point in time, we will consider, as we always said, opportunities in other countries in Europe. That's straightforward. You mentioned the lifetime value, the higher lifetime value compared to the initial data, the data we provided in the past. Look, this is saying that the omnichannel clients compared to the pure online clients have an ARPU which is 3.6x higher, so higher than it was before. And that's the demonstration that the omnichannel strategy works. When you apply that, you tend to work in a much better way on the share of wallet of the clients, right? So when you work better on the share of wallet of the clients, that results into a competitive edge in terms of value from the clients coming from the omnichannel vis-à-vis the pure online clients. That's why you see an improvement, a different number. The multi-brand, the fact that you are, that we're working very well also on the iGaming Omnichannel side, these altogether is, creating the conditions so that we are extracting, in relative terms to the pure online players, more value than before in the case of, the Omnichannel player. It's the demonstration it's one of the data points that demonstrates that the Omnichannel strategy works. The next question is from Ed Young with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I've got two, if that's okay. The first is on iGaming multichannel. I wonder if you could update us on what percentage of your iGaming share comes from multichannel or if there's any other kind of framework you can give for how you expect iGaming multichannel to progress. I appreciate you're not going to give us the absolute numbers. It's very clear you've left the axis off the slide for a reason. But if there's any way you can help talk to what kind of progress you expect in 2024, that would be very helpful. And the second is on your financial guidance. If I take the midpoint of your guidance, you're adding just over EUR 190 million of revenue or you expect to, and EUR 55 million of EBITDA, of which a bit more than half will come from iGaming. That's only incremental EBITDA margins of 28%, which is, you know, close to where your franchise margins are and well below where your online margins are. So I'm just trying to understand that. Is that, simply an element of conservatism in there, or are there other discretionary OPEX investments you're going to be making this year that will sort of suppress the gearing you might otherwise see? Thanks. Yeah. Let me take the first one. The second one is Laurence will take care of. Look, as you noticed, we're not giving absolute numbers. It's give or take. It depends on the month. It depends on clearly the volatility of the payout. Just to give you an order of magnitude, which we have by the way, in general, I think we already commented on that. It's give or take. It's representing roughly a point of market share in iGaming, which is sizable. Many players in Italy are smaller than that as of today. It's where do we want to get? We think I'm not giving you, actually, I'm not giving today a number on this, but I'll give you some data points. The direct network of gaming halls is slightly more than 10% in terms of number of shops, but it's roughly 30% of the value in terms of GGR, right, in gaming retail. This group of venues has, and it's a very sizable business, right, if you consider that the size of the gaming retail market is EUR 9 billion. We are shy of 30% of that. You know, it's a big business. This segment, this cluster, it's our direct network, has been very receptive to all the innovations of the model that we have put in place this year. We are rolling them out, but they have been very well received. We commented this in the past. We have added new ways of paying, for example, the speed of the payment, the type of enlarged, enhanced, visual experience, the live casino, all these type of things that have been very well received. It's a matter of rollout. So you have to think probably at a good level of penetration in that part of the business and a good level of conversion. The larger question mark, the bigger question mark, the bigger uncertainty will be on the indirect network because it will take more time to convince the indirect franchisees that there is value for them as there has been a lot of value for the franchisees in sports betting. The better way for doing this is, you know, showing that the right network is doing the right thing. So it's hard to take a commitment or a number. But if I should model that, you know, I clearly would take a longer time to penetrate in a smaller conversion simply because of the nature of the network. But really, the starting point also strategically is how good this is going into the direct network. There is buy-in. People are adopting the venues are adopting and selling the model. And it's very sizable. It's 30% of 30% of the market. That's a few data points. At the right moment in time, we'll provide more data and commitments on this. We want really to see how this rolls out in 2024 and then how it also flows from the direct network into the indirect network. I'll go to the second question. So Ed, of course, if you look at the delta revenues over delta EBITDA, you'll get to, you know, anywhere between 27%-30%. So, if you look at the overall margin versus this year, we go from 35.6% in 2023 to around 35% in 2024 when you do the math on the guidance. Well, this is, let me say a couple of things. The first is that it's a year where it makes a lot of sense for us to continue to capture the opportunity that is, you know, in the online space, you know, especially in light of the new, favorable changes in regulations that occurred in December that then should be formalized this year. So we want to continue to invest in the business. And therefore, you know, we factored that in our margins as well. Second, with regard to the conservative approach, I'd say, listen, as you know, we're still in end of February. We're giving a guidance that, generally, we feel, you know, very, very comfortable in achieving this year with a high degree of confidence, let me say. And then clearly, we'll see how the year pans out. Great. Thank you. The next question is from Fabio Pavan with Mediobanca. Please go ahead. Yes. Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my two questions. First one is if you can share with us an update on business trends, so first weeks of 2024, how things are going. Second question is on SKS acquisition. Could you share with us some update, in terms of what's going on with the acquisition, if everything is progressing in line with schedule? And also, I was wondering if you can tell us a reference number for an EBITDA contribution on 2024 numbers from SKS just to reconcile with consensus figures. Thank you. Yeah. Hi, Fabio. Guglielmo, let me take this one. And Laurence, of course, chime in whenever. Like current trading, look, the top line, the demand, the bet is very solid on online, also on sports betting. It's really January, as you know, has been unfavorable payout, again in Italy and also beyond Italy. February is looking much better. So it's looking, you know, good until today. And so we think it you know, apart from this type of volatility, we think the start of the year is really very solid. We see the demand. We see the strength of our brands. I don't know, Laurence, if you want to add any specific comment on this point. Yeah. I would say the only thing I'd add is that we continue to see the very same very strong trends that we've seen in Q4. These we continue to see them again in Q1 2024. So very solid, very strong growth in online sports franchises delivering again against the, you know, the project costs that we've implemented, and productivity is increasing. So we're very happy about that. And gaming franchise, you know, we continue to see this as a flat business. And again, this is confirmed by the numbers we see in our current trading. And February has been, you know, February is a good month again as Guglielmo mentioned. So nothing else on this point. Yeah. On, on second point, Fabio, on SKS, where do we stand? The dossier is back from the European Commission to the Italian antitrust. So it's been worked at the Italian antitrust level. We do not envisage anything different or anything particular than when we made the deal. So it's all bang in line with the schedule. We're already interacting at that level. You know, it's all according to plans. This comes to the last part of your question, Fabio. How much will we factor in? That's the reason why we didn't give; it's very hard to say because it depends on, you know, the exact date from which we start consolidating that. And consequently, we start working on the synergies. And some of them already fall in 2024. We start, you know, putting some of the quick wins in place. So it's very much once we know the date, I think we're going to be able very quickly to come out with a guidance on this that will add up to the group guidance. But really, the key point is the date of closing. That's pretty much about it. But it's only for that reason that we didn't give a number on that. The next question is from Domenico Ghilotti with Equita. Please go ahead. Good morning. I have a very quick question. It is on your expectation for online market growth in 2024, so if you think it can continue at double-digit pace? Yes, Domenico. Absolutely. We confirm our view, Laurence. I don't know if you want to be more specific. Correct. I mean, we continue to see, again, solid growth in the market generally. And so, exactly, we continue to see sort of double-digit growth. We've seen it in the first two months of this year. And we expect this to continue throughout the year. Okay. Just a quick follow-up. So, looking at your guidance, I should compare with the normalized if I'm correct, normalized payout number, so with a starting base of almost EUR 600 million. So basically, the bridge compared to that number is the midpoint is something like EUR 35 million- EUR 40 million. So it sounds a bit conservative. You have already commented. But I'm trying to understand if you are or if we are missing something. Maybe we are too aggressive on the project cost contribution, so the EUR 15 million or the bolt-on that you have already reflected as a potential other EUR 7 million-EUR 8 million or that's already been achieved during 2023. So any additional comment on that? Sure. No, no. At least it's a fair point. You know, if you let me say that if you look at sort of the average organic growth that you expect from each segment and apply that, let's say, to the 580, and then you add that, and then to that you add the contribution of the bolt-ons that we've done this year, you know, we'll probably have another, you know, EUR 7 million- EUR 8 million of bolt-ons that will flow through. They don't all grow at the same growth rate, by the way. And then also the contribution of the project cost, a slight increase in cost for the year, again, as we mentioned earlier. That's how you bridge from the sort of from the 580 to the 600 to sort of to the midpoint of the guidance. And clearly, listen, on the you know, the other reference point that you can use is when we look at the run rate adjusted EBITDA where we included 593, which is not different from the number that you have in the for the normalized payout. So, and again, this is the guidance as of 29th of February. This is, again, a level that we where we have, again, high degree of confidence. You can bridge the incremental EUR 14 million, you know, of all the bolt-ons on the project cost that are not yet reflected in 2023. So all these are incremental. And then we'll see. Then we'll see throughout the year how this works out. Thank you. The next question is from Simon Davies with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Yeah. Morning. Just a couple from me. Firstly, on payout ratios, can you give us a bit more color as to why there's so much more volatility in payout ratios in retail than in online? And you mentioned, obviously, that online has a sizable in-play component, but retail has a sizable virtuals component. So is there any big difference in the revenue mix from different sports that you're seeing that is driving that shift? And do you think that there is any medium-term upward potential further on, for the online gaming payout given the mix shift in favor of accumulators and higher-margin products such as Bet Builder? Secondly, you gave us a very helpful slide, 25, looking at brand performance within the Lottomatica portfolio. How has SKS 365's brands performed over the past year if you if you have that information? Thanks. Yeah. I'll start with this. And, you know, Laurence, feel free to add on the payout. Look, it's the payout we represent is without the virtual betting because virtual betting is an RNG game. So basically, you know, it's not about payout. You said the payout, like, you were doing a slot machine. And that's pretty much about it. There's no volatility in there. This is like the sports betting on real events. When it comes to that, so there's no component of virtual betting neither on retail nor in online. When it comes to that, you will see that, give or take, 70% of online is in play, which really calls for single bets as of today, while it's the opposite way around on retail. It's totally skewed towards pre-match and aggregators, right, which basically means aggregators do something very good for the industry. They decrease, on average, the payout because, you know, that's the way it works with proper odds. But they amplify the volatility. That's as simple as that. When it goes well, it goes super well. When it goes bad, it's bad. Aggregators are good for the average payout, but they do amplify volatility. That's the way the retail—what's the type of thing the customer the betting customer demands on retail. And it's very good also for the industry in the medium term. Will that type of offer also take place, improve, in the online betting? Maybe to a certain extent, yes. But the beauty of online betting and the way people use it is usually in play. While enjoying one or maximum two specific events, you will never find, like, you will never find. It's harder to find, like, a 10-leg bet or with different type of things, spanning from soccer to volleyball to basketball, in that type of situation because it really doesn't match with an in-play occasion of use, right? So there is for sure an opportunity there. But at the same time, I personally don't think it's huge. Sorry. So there was—my apologies. There was another question, or this was the—this was the one? Yeah. No, that answers it primarily. But is there a big difference in the product mix, either sports mix between retail and online? It's much higher exposure to soccer in the online piece. No. No. No. No. No. Pretty much not. It's no. It's just the way the product is used, so to make it simple, as I said, in-play single, pre-match, multiple aggregators. Yeah. Maybe, maybe just, Simon, just so more accumulators in sports and less live, and then less accumulators and more live in online. As a matter of fact, if you look at the volatility of our online business, it's the payout is much less volatile. So last year, there were the impact if you look at last year's impact on the payout, it's basically all due to sports in the sports franchise. You see almost all the impact there, right? So the EUR 16 million impact that we included is basically attributable entirely to the sports franchise. The next question is from Jemma Permalloo with JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. I just had two questions from the credit side, please. I think just looking, my first question is regarding your bond. So some of your peers have been looking at the more expensive debt and using some soft call provisions to exercise early redemption. And granted, that's maybe in a smaller denomination. I just wanted to see if you're planning to address maybe some of your bonds, especially the 2027. It looks like quite an expensive debt ahead of maturity. And then my second question, maybe on a similar line, any, any color on your general capital allocation priorities? You've mentioned the dividend payout, but I wanted to check by how much you would be ready to increase your leverage temporarily on, on potential M&A. Thank you. Okay. The first question on our capital structure, we've basically extended all our maturities almost entirely 2028 or beyond, 2028 or 2030. For the 2027s, listen, we'll see, right? It's an expensive piece of debt. We'll look at the market conditions at the time it becomes callable. And then we'll take the decision whether to refinance or not or when to refinance it. So I think the math there is relatively straightforward. And in terms of capital allocation, I think we've obviously, you know, we have a dividend policy, which we will continue to follow. We've announced today a dividend policy of EUR 0.26 a share, so 30% of adjusted net profit, which is bang on line with what we had said earlier at IPO. We'll continue to again invest further. And maybe on this, it's a good segue to maybe expand on this point in terms of how we plan to use our capital. But you know, we're focused on growth, obviously our growth and returns. And there's still a very good year for us to continue to invest in our business. And there are extremely good market opportunities that we plan to capitalize on. Okay. This is Alice. I think we have a couple of questions from the webcast. We need to answer more about the online news on regulation and on the opportunities that are coming from this new regulation. So I leave Guglielmo maybe to answer. Yeah. Look, the online regulation, which is a piece of the broader sector regulation, first point, EUR 7 million per concession. We are happy to pay for that, because it's more in line with the value of the concessions. And actually, just to be straightforward, it professionalizes the market. So you need to be to it's a good payoff. It sets a better, it's a good payoff for both the industry and the state. And it professionalizes the market. On top of this, you have to consider that things which have been used in the past to kind of sometimes allow behaviors or business models which we, you know, don't think are particularly right for this industry, like the use of skin, the total externalizations, the use of white labels, you know, people taking one concession at EUR 200,000 and then using 50 skins, which has clearly driven a lot of, say, noise in the market. It was not an ordered market, the level of fragmentation, the level of controls that the state could do. This all goes away. It's all blown away by a very clear setup that says, "You take one concession. You operate your brand. And that's about it." Very strict control on this type of aspect, which is an opportunity, first of all, for the state to clean up the market. And, you know, we'll help them. We'll do our part. The second point is, this regulation states, for the first time in this industry in 20 years, that you cannot change taxes, conditions, rules, while a concession is up and running, which is, you know, an obvious principle. But it's not been so obvious in the past. And it's put in written in the concession. And, even though lately, also, there is a decision of a court of the Supreme Court Administrative Court a couple of days ago on a matter like this, which states the same principle, one thing is, you know, having the principle stated by a court after the litigation. And one thing is having that in the concession. It makes explicit that there is a strong, constructive approach of the government, of the Parliament on this type kind of topic, that the role of the industry is recognized. When you say, you know, "We commit not to change rules, not to change" when you say, "We commit, if there is any change, to compensate for that," it's a quantum leap in the approach of, institutions and politics and government and Parliament, to the industry, which I think gives a strong premium to Italian regulation compared to any other type of, regulations, at least, around, Europe. When it gets into for example, I'll make, another example. And then I draw conclusions on this point. When you get to a part of the reform which is that the companies will have to operate responsible gaming procedures, which are certified by the monopoly, by the regulator, you do something which is, I think, of paramount importance because most of the large players are already doing that, have invested heavily on this. You know, we are releasing a system, especially devoted to this, in the online for the management of gamblers with potential problems. But clearly, it has to be level playing field for the industry. A big part of the industry today doesn't do that and now becomes compulsory. But still, it's in the hands of the concessionaire. So the concessionaire, which is the other relevant political message, is trusted by the state. He has to get his systems approved. But it's on proposal. There's no number coming out from the clouds, from nowhere, without any logic, as we've seen in other countries. It's the concessionaire proposing a system, procedures, and then the monopoly approving that, which, I think is, you know, the, the does level playing field with operators, with the long list of operators which today don't do it, doesn't change much for those operators who are already committed and are already doing this type of controls and checks, and states the importance and the relevance and the attitude of the state towards this. Long story short, this calls for the consolidation of the sector, which means that we are, and professionalization of the sector, with a stable regulation. That's why it's so important. We have the assets. We are doing very well. This is a market with a strong organic growth, double-digit. We are growing market share. We have additional opportunities of taking additional market share from this new setup, while also helping the government to do a cleanup of the market. That's basically what it is, to become more accountable, more reliable. So, I think it's very important that people understand this point. It's a quantum leap in the quality of regulation in Italy. It puts it as a premium compared to other jurisdictions. And it opens a new list of opportunities in terms of bolt-on and market share acquisition in a market which is very solid and growing, continues to grow double-digit, according to us, for the next many years, even the underpenetration of online compared, for example, to the U.K. So that's the core of the reform and how that links to our business strategy. Okay. Thank you. I think we answered almost all questions also from the webcast except, maybe one about the dividend payment. Of course, pending the AGM approval, the dividend payment is scheduled for 22 of May. So having said that, I thank everyone for participating to today's call. Let me remind you that our next release will be on the 30th of April for Q1 results. And of course, we remain available for any other follow-up. Have a nice day, everyone. Please, operator, you can close the call. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over. You may disconnect your telephones.