Okay, the conference room is on. So we will wait around 20 seconds so everyone can join, and then we will start. All right, I think we can start right now. Good morning. My name is Janusz Maruszewski. I would like to welcome you to a meeting with the management board of CI Games, which will be dedicated to discussing the financial results for the first half of 2023. There are already with me Marek Tymiński, CEO. Good morning, Marek. Hello. Hi. Marek, oh, okay. And David Broderick, CFO. Good morning. Good morning. The meeting will be divided into two parts: a presentation, which you can already see, and a Q&A session. I'd like to invite you to participate and ask questions. So, gentlemen, the stage is yours. Yeah. Thank you. I'll take you through the presentation this morning. Obviously, we have our cover here, which is featuring Lords, the upcoming release on the 13th of October. Just for anybody who's not familiar with the story, we'll just bring you very quickly through the background to the company. We're a globally recognized developer and publisher with expertise in first-player shooters and RPG games. Generally rated at AA+ or AAA games, operating across all the major platforms. Listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange for a number of years, best known for two of our most major evergreen franchises, which have contributed over 23 million units over the years in the form of Lords of the Fallen and Sniper Ghost Warrior. Equally, a strong back catalog of IP, and we're looking to launch a third piece of IP with a survival game, in the future. We have an experienced global team. That's part of our USP, fully remote, five key locations globally, and now actually touching nearly over 170 full-time staff across the group. We also have a strong relationship with third-party developers and outsourcers who help us bring our games to the market. Traditionally, we've been known as a strong, high margin business, delivering strong historic EBITDA margins and net income margins as well. Again, what goes to make this up is a seasoned management team, as you can see here, with vast experience from a number of developers and years of experience built up across the industry, all contributing to help build and shape CI Games over the future and currently in the last few years. Lords of the Fallen, as I alluded to, is probably one of the most anticipated games for release this year, scheduled for release on 13th of October, so not far away. There's a clear, strong appetite for large Action RPG. We saw this with Elden Ring in 2022. Again, we're building on the release of the original game a number of years ago in 2014, which had over 10 million+ players over its life that have played it. This is a full reboot to appeal back to that audience and hopefully unlock a new audience for the game going forward. It's been developed through our Hexworks studio using UE5. I think the key components here is that we've really focused on triple-A production values. We've used state-of-the-art visuals and gameplay. It's for next-gen consoles, and as I said, it's built on the UE5 platform. I think what's key here as well, is we've been to build a very strong global marketing campaign that's seen the game currently sitting 12th on global wish lists, nearly 90 million trailer views, over 1 million wish lists, and significant press and video coverage for the game, all leading up to that. And there's a stronger marketing beat to come over the next 2-3 weeks as we lead up to release. Future success for us is obviously key as we look to build on Lords of the Fallen. Again, I think for us, the ingredients going forward is to produce games effectively, efficiently, to the highest quality levels, and to AAA standards. Again, we focused on having a new unified tech stack in the form of the Unreal Engine. We look to leverage the expertise that we've built up over a number of years and that knowledge and know-how in marketing, self-publishing, in order to bring these IPs to the various platforms. We've also got United Label, which is another key part where we look to bring third-party IP publishing. And we've also got our back catalog as well, which we can leverage and build on for future. Again, a lot of our knowledge and know-how can help us diversify into other IP diversification. And again, we can also look at building on the strong IP that we've built in terms of looking at licensing and other means by which we can apply this and develop it into other forms of medium, whether that be entertainment products, TV, movies, or other means by which we can license or franchise the IP that we've built. Again, I suppose the focus for today is basically our financials. In the half year, we totaled revenue of PLN 22.2 million. 44% of this revenue had come from Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2, and 26% coming from the United Label portfolio.... Again, it's a drop year-on-year, but again, it's in a year where we've had no releases in the last 12 months. So again, in terms of back catalog, it's a pleasing, reasonably strong performance on that. If we look at the kind of selling costs and we look at the SG&A overall, our selling costs are up PLN 4 million year-on-year. Again, most of that is coming from an increased marketing, primarily built around Lords. That's close on nearly PLN 3 million of the PLN 4 million incremental spend. We've also been building out our marketing and publishing teams. Again, that's contributed, and again, these are the major contributors that have seen the increase in PLN 4 million year-on-year. In terms of G&A costs, relatively flat year-on-year, PLN 1.4 million. Again, last year, we probably had close on PLN 2.6 million of exceptional costs, most of that attributable to the dual listing. Again, what we've been doing is building out the infrastructure as we've scaled and grown in the last kind of 12 months, building out our HR team, our recruitment team, and other kind of costs related to us building the, the mechanism or the machine behind the, the overall organization as we scale and grow. In terms of balance sheet, again, where we are overall on this is that, you know, our total assets, assets have increased 23%. Again, that's primarily a contributor coming from our investments in games. Our intangible assets amounted to PLN 197 million. That's a net increase of PLN 45 million in total. This is basically due to the projects that we have on stream at the moment, Lords of the Fallen, Project Survive, and Project Scorpio, all contributing to that increase. The group's debt in H1 related to two bank facilities. The balance of that at half year was PLN 48.2 million, and there's a small finance or office rental liability of PLN 3 million, making up the other portion of that. In terms of total cash flow, you can see most of the activity is driven from our investment in the games. And again, that's just us doubling down on Lords, Survive, Scorpio, with a cash balance at the 30th of June of PLN 4.9 million. Also, you will have seen in a post half year event, was us raising a bond for over 6 million EUR as well, which goes into helping us to continue to deliver and fund the launch of Lords. So that basically concludes the presentation today, reasonably brief. I think if we want to open it up to Q&A, we can probably start. David, let me just start with answering on the marketing, marketing question, in terms of relationship to marketing spend. I think that just to make it very clear, this is... We don't want to share precise information here in terms of the marketing budget, because obviously, we want to share some of those informations after the release. And what I can say just today, is that the total marketing budget, it will get close to EUR 20 million. So we'll be spending almost EUR 20 million on marketing budget, and the majority of that is being spent, pretty much starting to be spent this week, going through the launch of the game and post-launch. So the majority of marketing is gonna be yet spent, is not yet spent, same time. Are we satisfied with the results of the marketing campaign? Yes, we are. So far, yes, we are satisfied with the results, but again, the majority of media buy will happen. We just started to do that now, and that's the majority of the budget to be allocated and spent now. Are there any key marketing events? Not really, any marketing key events until the launch, apart from the fact that the launch is a very big marketing event for us, but it's not related to any external events or shows. A question to you, David: Is the company comfortable with its current cash levels a few days before the Lords launch? You're muted, I think. Again, comfortable with the levels and the projections. Like I said, it was key to kind of flag we through a number of means, PKO BP, have been providing the principal finance in the form of debt. There was the bond, which was raised post half year. And there's the other aspect in terms of management of our suppliers, et cetera, in terms around that. Obviously, the inflows from our back catalog, which all contribute to our cash flows. So again, we've been projecting and managing and forecasting that very carefully. And we're comfortable with the levels of cash that we have to deliver pre and post-Lords release. A question here: What's the reason for plan update of the strategy one year after the previous major update? It's important for us to keep investors informed, and, I mean, we don't expect major changes to the strategy that we have, but it's more probably of a lifting, but we want to do that every single year, basically. We want to stick to that every single year to update the investors. I think it's important for everyone to understand... There's nothing major that we are planning to change in the strategy. We're absolutely comfortable with the current strategy that we have, and we're very happy with the transformation of the company, of the business that we have done over the last four or five years. I see the questions in terms of whether or not we will be providing any information in terms of pre-orders before the launch. We do not plan to provide information before the launch. We are planning to provide the information on the publishing, the sales, post-launch, and we said that publicly, that the latest we will provide that information until the end of October. If we can provide something sooner, if we have the information sooner, we'll try to provide the information sooner, but we don't plan to provide the information ahead of the launch. David, that's to you. What's the interest of foreign investment funds? Do you have any specific information on this subject? I think obviously, we've had a lot of engagement, you know, we've done meetings around Gamescom. Last week I was at Redeye Conference in Stockholm, and certainly there's a number of London and U.S.-based sell-side institutions who we've been talking to, and we've done fireside conversations with some of their analysts, and updating on those. So people, I think, are very clearly aware of CI Games, and they're aware of Lords, and there's an interest and a speculation there around it. So, you know, we'll continue to focus on the business, delivering the results, producing good games, and, you know, we'll help build the awareness on the investor side as well. So it's a, it's an ongoing kind of development. But, yeah, there's definitely interest there. Is the company satisfied with the quality of the Fallen? Yes, we are satisfied. Based on all the information that we have, we are absolutely satisfied with the quality of that game. David, do you see anything we should answer next? I'm just looking through the So how many, how many people are currently working on Lords of the Fallen? I mean, definitely not as many as we had most of the time. Most of the time during production on that game, we had almost 200 people full-time working, with around 80-90 people internally and, another 80-90 people or more externally. But obviously, that number is lower now, especially in terms of the, in, in terms of the outsources. We don't, we don't have that many outsources working on that project. There's just one question here. Somebody looking to kind of understand how we release the game to reviewers, you know, when the reviewers' opinions will start to come out, and how that cycle works. Yeah, that's a good question. So we are, we are obviously sending the game, sending review codes, ahead of the launch, to all the journalists and, influencers. And we are planning to have the reviews to be ahead of the launch. It's quite kind of stretch for us. I mean, there, there's been a lot of work on that game, and currently, we've pretty much done in terms of the day one, day one update, day one patch. So we don't think that the reviews will be like many days ahead of the launch, but definitely we are planning to have at least a day ahead of the launch, the reviews to be out in public. Just another question here: post Lords, how are you thinking about future release schedules, the roadmap for Lords, potentially? Any kind of views on that you can share? I think this is definitely part of what we want to speak during the strategic update. It's too early for us to share. We would like to also have a bit more learning coming from releasing Lords of the Fallen in two weeks, and will help us to make the final decisions on how we want to support Lords and how we want to basically further build that franchise in the future. Obviously, we've talked about Survive. It seems a very different game to Lords. Why create something that, you know, to some people maybe appears very different? Yeah. So Project Survive is important part of our portfolio. This is the next bigger game that we will be coming up with. And again, we will speak more about that during the strategic update. We recently shifted the development to the internal studio. That is important to us. We absolutely consider that game as a very important release, and we wanted to make sure that we have the best team involved and engaged, basically, in developing that game. And as I think what we said during the presentation, I mean, we have a very strong team across different studios. Very strong teams across different studios internally. And it's coming how we structure the business, how we employ our talent, and as you mentioned, David, we are fully remote, and that allows us to basically get a very strong group of people in each studio. And as investors can see, I mean, Lords of the Fallen is a great example of that, and validation for our business model and for our structure and how we operate. And the same way we are absolutely want to go forward with Survive, this project Survive. That game has been into development for around two years, so a lot of what have been created for that game is part of the project, Project Survive, right? So it's more of a continuation of the works with certain upgrade and liftings, rather than absolutely restarting the project. So it's there, and it's quite a lot already out. And again, like this, we will be able to speak more about that on the strategic update. And in terms of the genre, the survival genre has been growing significantly over the last years. A great example, Sons of the Forest. That game came out around six months ago, and I think... Don't remember exact figures, but I think it's around 7-8 million copies sold just on PC in early access. So that's, again, great, great example of popularity of that genre and the growth of that genre in the recent years, and we want to be part of that genre. Just back to Lords, is there any kind of color you can give in terms of the platforms or the split of platforms, in terms of how you potentially see sales? PC over- Yeah, so PC, definitely, we're expecting PC to be absolutely the major platform. It's 50% or more in terms of the sales on PC. Let's wait until around mid-October, we will know that for sure, but definitely PC is the major platform, and then consoles to follow. Obviously, we expect PlayStation performance to be stronger than Xbox, but both platforms are very important to us. There, there's another question here. Somebody notes your use of the term CI Games 2.0, and I suppose they're just eager to understand what that means versus the original CI Games? You know, what do you see as the key differences between that and version 2.0? Right. So I think that's a very good question, and, as you know, we already said that in probably a couple of weeks ago. I think that we have gone through a serious transformation in the last four or five years, and the change, primarily, is the quality of our teams and the structure we operate. So we're fully remote and fully global, with huge majority of our people across different countries in Europe. A very senior staff, very senior talent, and that's on the development, but that's the same on marketing and basically the management of the whole company, with the executive team being remote and spread out across various countries, as you presented that on one of the slides of the presentation. It's a very senior, very, very senior team on top, so that's just one big thing. The other big thing here is that CI Games 2.0 also demonstrates our dedication to quality and the scope of projects that we are developing and publishing. Again, Lords of the Fallen is a great example. The new Lords of the Fallen is a great example of that strategy, and more to come from us. There, there's another question here. We've obviously talked about kind of up to the release and the promotion and the marketing around Lords. Somebody looking to see if there's any color, you know, post-launch or, you know, any activity that we can talk to around that, or how we see ourselves supporting the game. I think absolutely, Lords of the Fallen is our key franchise, and we will absolutely support that. We can't say more now, and the marketing will not end just at the release date, so we have plans, marketing plans, post-release, just soon after, and then not that soon after, in terms of marketing support for Lords of the Fallen. I think that would appear to be most of the questions at this point. Is there anything you want to touch on yourself, Marek, or kind of just restate for the benefit of investors? Yeah. I think people are asking about the sales forecast and what we think we can basically sell, and how many units we basically can sell, what we expect. Obviously, we cannot share that, and we're just two weeks away from the release, so I think we just have to wait, and everyone has to wait. And it's and very honestly, it's too early for us to be certain about what kind of sales we will will generate with Lords of the Fallen. It's just too early. We will know that in probably three weeks from now. And in terms of... Just another question. And in terms of the performance of the game, that's another question. I mean, we're very confident about quality of the game and the performance on both PC and consoles, and we made it very clear that we're expecting this game to run in 60 FPS, 60 frames per second, on consoles in a performance mode. I mean, yeah, I mean, we obviously will be providing support to the game post-launch. So obviously, every game is a software product. Every software product has certain amount of bugs at the launch. That's very much normal, and we think we have a very quality release, but still there will be things to fix. So the team will be ready, and we'll fix things that we will understand from the communities as soon as we can, right? So we're absolutely committed to fully supporting the game after the launch. And then it's just again a question on the sales forecast. I think, and just to give a bit of guidance, I think again, in terms of how you calculate the sales, it's difficult to be precise here. We have to wait until the launch, and then we will be able to share some more thoughts and more information data with our investors, when this will become basically known to us as well, just after the launch. David, anything else you see? I mean- Just on Lords, obviously, I think probably coming from other releases of late. With Lords, how do we feel about online stability post-launch, and kind of general operation? Obviously, some other high-profile games have had issues in recent weeks. Yeah, I think that, first and foremost, you know, Lords, we don't have dedicated servers, so it's not gonna be a major problem, for sure, right? Because it's a different structure than we use. And, we don't expect major issues with multiplayer. It works well for us. But obviously, we may see some of that in terms of, like, basically, that depends, right? I mean, if the two players will be very far from each other, then they may experience a bit of a lag. But we are openly saying that, and, that's just an exception here. We think that it's a very strong experience in the multiplayer as well, and we're confident we're delivering quality product, as I said before. Just one question here, which I can take, just about our plans for the dual listing. Obviously, we parked that. It was at a time when, I suppose, sentiment globally on equity markets had changed, and it had certainly on the U.K. market, where the dual listing was proposed, changed against games or gaming-related companies. I think in the meantime, we've seen, obviously, a strong improvement in our performance on the Polish market and our principal listing. I think a better understanding of what we're doing and what we're building. And we're also... You know, the Polish market allows us to be in with a very strong peer group of listed gaming companies that, you know, people globally and locally understand. So I think for the moment, we're more than happy being in Warsaw and listed in Warsaw with the peer group we have, the informed investor base that exists there. And it's a more than a good home for CI Games currently. I don't know if you see any other questions, Marek. Yeah, I think we can answer a question here on, in terms of the Q&A, basically, about whether this is internal and external. So obviously, just to be very clear, we are using one of the top external companies for testing. We've been working with them for pretty much very long time already on that game. But recently, we have also been using our internal team, once they have a bit less of work on the game, so they also jump and help. But primarily, that's external, the external company that is responsible for the QA of that game. I don't really see, David... Just, I think that we answered pretty much most of the questions or- Yeah. Questions are very similar. Okay. So gentlemen, thank you for the presentation and answering the questions. I wish you good luck at the launch of the Lords of the Fallen. My and your guests were Marek Tymiński, CEO of CI Games. Thank you, Marek. Thank you very much. David Broderick, CFO of CI Games. Thank you, David. Thank you. That's all for today. Greetings, and have a nice day. See you next time. Goodbye. Thank you. Thank you. Bye.