Acroud, an online gaming affiliate company, said that a record number new depositing clients (NDCs), helped to drive revenue up by 32.9% on a year-over-year basis in the first quarter 2023.
The addition of 92 659 NDCs during the quarter ending 31 March is partly due to the strong performance in “Paid Media Partnerships”, which was acquired at the end of 2022.
Acroud is on track to achieve year-over-year growth in 2023 across several areas.
Andersson stated that “the first quarter was business as usual, while we tuned in our new media unit.”
“The decline in revenue was due to the unfavourable sporting results of February. We would have seen a growth in both revenue and profits if it weren’t for the results of the last week of football in February. Over time, these clusters of unreliable sports results tends to balance out.
We have addressed the performance of the casino SEO business by focusing more on the revenue-share model. Over time, this will lead to a more stable revenue stream even if the initial impact is on the top line.
Results
The revenue for the third quarter was EUR9.3m. This is up from EUR7.0m during the same period in 2017, but down 7.0% compared to EUR10.0m at the end of 2022.
This is broken down: igaming affiliate revenue was up 103.0% year-on-year to EUR6.0m. Even after excluding the impact from the new acquisition, the revenue still increased by 26.0%. NDCs in the area increased 12.0%, reaching a new record of 76 917.
This total was 78% revenue share agreements. 10% were cost per acquisition, and the rest 12% came from other activities. Acroud published a breakdown by affiliate type. Paid media generated 63% of revenue, SEO 27%, and social and community-based 9%.
Turning to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) business, revenue was 23.0% higher year-on-year at EUR3.0m, but down 12.0% from Q4 of 2022. NDCs increased 7.0% to 15,742 from Q1 2022.
The main expenditure was EUR6.2m for other external costs. Personnel expenses were also higher. These increases outweighed the increase in revenue. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA), which is the earnings before income, tax, amortisation, and depreciation (EBITDA), fell 5.8% to EUR2.1m.
Acroud is also responsible for EUR1.1m of depreciation, amortisation and EUR860,000 of net finance costs. This means that the pre-tax profit in 2017 was EUR115,000 – down 90.9% from last year. The group paid EUR182,000 income tax leaving a loss of EUR67,000 compared to the EUR1.2m profit that was made in 2022.
Andersson stated, “We will continue to work towards delivering growth, profitability and value for shareholders.” “I am looking forward to the next quarters,” Andersson said.
