Pay packet racket
Penn CEO enjoyed a 72% pay increase in 2024
Compensation news comes as HG Vora continues the proxy fight.
Aussie Betr renews PointsBet bid, plots Canadian biz sale to Hard Rock.
The earnings edit: Caesars Entertainment, Entain, BetMGM, Betsson.
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Nice work if you can get it: Penn Entertainment CEO Jay Snowden saw his total compensation rise to $26.7m in 2024, a 72% increase on the year previous, even as the online division racked up nearly half-a-billion-dollar losses and the company came under pressure from activist investors.
While Snowden’s base salary remained static at $1.8m, his stock awards rose by more than five times to $15.9m.
Option awards amounted to $4.75m and his non-equity incentive plan compensation was worth $2.84m, while other compensation hit $413k including $61k of private jet usage.
Qualifying criteria: Snowden’s stock awards were dependent on the adj. EBITDA performance of the retail and online businesses, alongside other metrics including database growth, omni-channel play and ESPN Bet market share.
Red rag: The news of Snowden’s compensation for last year was contained in Penn’s proxy statement released this week and comes against the backdrop of anger on the part of activist investor HG Vora over the management and board performance.
That battle took another turn this week after HG Vora complained about Penn only appointing two of its nominees instead of the three it was lobbying for.
Moving the goalposts: While Penn has now announced that Sorelle Capital co-founder Carlos Ruisanchez and former Superbet CEO Johnny Hartnett are set to join the board, it left off the name of former Penn CFO William Clifford and reduced the number of seats up for election from three to two.
HG Vora issued a statement lambasting the board’s “self-serving action.”
It added it had “no legitimate corporate purpose and deprives shareholders of their fundamental right to elect directors of their choosing.”
A sit-down meeting: The HG Vora statement went on to say it was previously notified in writing by Penn that it intended to hold an election for three board seats and at a meeting held last Friday its representatives had discussed how best to fill those seats.
To the mattresses: HG Vora told Penn then it felt it had the votes to successfully get all three of its candidates elected at the final vote due in June.
But on the same day, Penn announced the move to restrict that to two new seats.
What you’re missing: HG Vora said it believes Clifford would be a “valuable addition” to the board and that “rather than continuing to waste shareholder capital and corporate resources” Penn should welcome his input.
Slated: The activist’s complaints are likely to be further inflamed by the news of Snowden’s pay award for 2024. When HG Vora launched its own slate of board nominations in January, an element of its complaint was about Penn “rewarding its CEO with excessive compensation.”
In January, HG Vora issued an SEC filing saying it had lowered its voting rights to less than 5% to avoid gaming licensing issues but retained a larger economic interest in Penn’s shares.
That cleared the way for it to put forward board nominations ahead of this year’s AGM.
The company said it would be filing its own proxy statement with the SEC in the coming weeks.
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Betr buy and sell
Hard funded: A sale of PointsBet’s Canadian business to Hard Rock Digital is a part of the plans put forward by Australian betting minnow betr in its renewed attempt to pursue a reverse takeover of rival PointsBet.
In the HY25, the PointsBet Canada business generated revenue of A$18.2m (US$11.6m) for a segment EBITDA loss of A$12.2m.
On the call to investors on Thursday, betr chair Matthew Tripp said the putative deal largely consisted of a player database.
One betr: The news of the potential US$29.6m transaction came with the announcement of an improved A$360m cash and shares offer from the newly renamed betr Entertainment for PointsBet.
The bid is to be part-funded by a A$130m capital raise, Recall, a previous attempt to buy its larger rival was rebuffed on the basis of being unfunded.
Mixi and match: Betr hopes to undermine the A$353m bid from Japanese entertainment conglomerate Mixi, which has already been recommended by the PointsBet board.
The renewed bid follows the news earlier in the week that betr had bought a near-20% stake in PointsBet, making it the largest shareholder.
This “materially reduces the likelihood” of that bid being successful, said chair Matthew Tripp.
Tripp switch: On the call announcing the new offer, Tripp said it provides “significantly greater value” to PointsBet shareholders than the Mixi alternative.
He added that there was a “significant synergy prize” of $40m annually to be gained and that the “innovative mix and match structure” on offer gives PointsBet shareholders the “opportunity to participate” in future growth via the shares offer.
Tripp also promised more potential M&A, saying that, while getting to 10% market share would allow the company to grow "profitably at scale,” he had “made no secret of the inorganic story and the fact that we’ll continue to pursue further M&A.”
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Soon-to-combine Everi and IGT offered up brief earnings statements for Q1, with IGT’s digital and gaming business expected to record revenues of $370m-$410m and adj. EBITDA at $120m-$135m. Everi’s revenues are expected to come in at $176m-$186m with adj EBITDA at $66m-$72m.
Data points 1: Las Vegas Strip revenues fell 4.8% YoY in March to $682m while Locals was up 1.8% to $276m. The damage on the Strip was down to baccarat, which fell 34% in revenue terms and 9% in terms of drop. Strip table games revenue ex-baccarat was down 7% while Strip slot revenue was up 4.5%.
Data points 2: According to iGaming Ontario, revenue in the province rose 32% YoY in the year to March to C$3.2bn ($2.3bn) with iCasino up 36% to C$2.4bn and sports betting up 23% to $724m. P2P poker was flat at C$66m.
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Earnings edit
Caesars Entertainment
Really not seeing it: According to Tom Reeg, CEO, Caesars is simply not seeing anything of the consumer softness that investors “seem to be worried about,” with Las Vegas forward bookings remaining strong, regional gaming “coming in nicely” and digital posting strong growth.
Temperature check: This, despite seeing the “same macro picture you do in terms of what’s going to happen with tariffs and consumer spending and inflation.”
CFO Bret Yunker noted this benign assessment was right up the minute. “I’ve got numbers through to today,” he said.
Holding us back: The digital performance would have been better if it weren’t for the well-publicized hold issues during March Madness.
The company estimated that revenue would have been $88m better vs. the actual increase of $53m, while adj. EBITDA would have come in at ~$60m vs. the actual total of $43m.
iCasino was the “stellar performer,” said Reeg, growing at 54% YoY.
See today’s Earnings Extra edition (PRO subscribers only).
Entain
Stella earnings: Having been confirmed as the permanent CEO following the shock departure of predecessor Gavin Isaacs in February, Stella David got to crow about a Q1 resurgence for Entain, with the company confronting and overcoming “brutal truths” in the past year.
Single-minded: If the second quarter last year was about “stopping losing” then Q2 this year is about “one thing: starting to win again and winning in the right way.”
UK & Ireland online saw a 23% increase in NGR in the first three months of the year, while Brazil was up 31% as the business picked up speed after a slow start in January.
With the Entain CEE unit also seeing double-digit online growth, it led to group online NGR ex-the US being up 10% YoY.
But retail was slightly less positive, up 2% at a group level, with the UK & Ireland seeing a 1% decline, while the Australian business was also negative with NGR down 8%.
See yesterday’s Earnings Extra edition (PRO subscribers only).
BetMGM
Premier in: BetMGM said a concentration on providing the best experience to premium sports-betting customers lay behind its continued momentum carried through from the end of last year into the quarter just gone.
CEO Adam Greenblatt said the company was “playing to our strengths” and being “surgical” with its promotional reinvestment after it showed OSB net revenues rising 68% YoY.
Meanwhile, the juggernaut of iCasino continued with a 27% rise, meaning that in both segments it maintained its market share levels of 22% and 8% respectively.
I thought we’d discussed this: On the issue of the day and prediction markets, Greenblatt said he thought the issue of state regulation was settled but clearly he was wrong.
But he noted the lower margins for prediction markets and similarity to exchange betting suggested it might be only a niche product.
See Monday’s Earnings Extra edition (PRO subscribers only).
Betsson
Latin quarter: Betsson’s progress continued into the first quarter with growth in sportsbook margins, B2B and LatAm all contributing to an 18% uplift in revenues to €294m. All this ahead of the potential for Brazil, which opened post quarter close.
B2Turkey: A large chunk of the overall growth came from Betsson’s B2B operation, which includes the service provision to the arm’s-length Turkish-facing operation.
B2B revenue rose 32% to €90m or 31% of group revenues while the Central and Eastern European region, in which most of the B2B revenue sits, was up 11% to €122m.
Hello: Having finally received a license from the Brazilian authorities, Betsson recently launched in the country. Even without any revenue from Brazil, LatAm revenues climbed 70% to €74.5m.
Goodbye: Meanwhile, the company said that following a strategic review of its African ambitions it had decided to exit the Nigerian market.
See yesterday's Earnings Extra edition (PRO subscribers only).
Quick takes
MGM Resorts: The decent performance posted by BetMGM has further encouraged the analysts at Seaport that the 50/50 partnership situation should be resolved by a MGM buyout of partner Entain. In order to unlock value, the team suggested, an acquisition of the stake – or a buyout of Entain – would be “transformative” and unlock long-term value.
FDJ United: The dangers of lagging behind the competition when it comes to implementing necessary regulatory tightening were highlighted by the analysts at Deutsche Bank as being one reason why revenues from FDJ’s UK operations are set to remain weak for at least the next two quarters.
Venture playground
Growth company news
Ooh: Canada-based iCasino community producer Betty has raised US$15m to fund further growth through a new funding source called CadaCredit, a private credit platform focused on financing gambling businesses.
The Ontario-focused platform said that the net revenue run rate for the business hit US$114m in 2024 while its active player base hit 40k.
A who’s who: This is the first funding deal announced by CadaCredit, whose founders include Oakvale Capital’s Sandford Loudon, Betty co-founder and CEO Justin Park, STS founder Mateusz Juroszek, Mount Media co-founders Amaury de Sadeleer and Carlos Segovia, and Kyril Louis-Dreyfus, scion of the Louis-Dreyfus family and owner of UK English Football League club Sunderland.
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