Cirsa Enterprises, S.A.U.

Cirsa Enterprises, S.A.U.

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Dec 01Next Earn

Q4 FY2025 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 26, 2026

Operator

Good day, and welcome, everyone, to the CIRSA fourth quarter 2025 financial results presentation hosted by Joaquim Agut, Executive Chairman, Antonio Hostench, Chief Executive Officer, and Antonio Grau, Chief Financial Officer. My name is Becky, and I am your event manager.

During the presentation, your lines will remain on a listen-only. If you require assistance at any time, please press *0 on your telephone and an operator will be happy to assist you.

Please note that in the Q&A session, you can ask questions by phone or in writing via the webcast, and the answers will always be given orally with the order of preference being given those verbally. I would now like to advise all parties that this conference is being recorded.

Now, I would like to hand over to Joaquim Agut, Executive Chairman. Please go ahead.

Joaquim Agut

Thank you very much. Thanks to everyone for being here today attending our fourth quarter '25 results presentation.

I'll start with company highlights. On the first chart, 2025, it has been for CIRSA another great year of strong performance coming from the precise execution of our plans implemented by the different management teams.

As always happened, since this management team took over the company back in 2006, we always delivered all our financial commitments. Regarding 2025 results, both revenues and EBITDA exceeded our revised guidance.

Revenues ended at €2,339 million. This is an improvement year-on-year of +8.8%.

EBITDA closed at €753.5 million, an improvement of 7.8% year-on-year, giving a margin of 32%. In retail businesses, CIRSA achieved growth targets of mid-single digits, as committed.

Our online business unit kept growing very well, and online figures reach and improve our IPO roadshow commitments of delivering revenues above €500 million and EBITDA above €100 million in 2025. By year-end, online revenues ended at €529 million, an improvement year-on-year of +25.8%, and EBITDA ended at €104 million, an improvement of 22%.

Q4 '25 represents our 70th consecutive quarter of EBITDA growth, excluding COVID time. €134 million were invested on bolt-on M&A across of our highly fragmented markets and at very attractive multiples.

Last July the 9th, we launched our successful IPO, facilitating growth acceleration and debt reduction. Financial cost has been reduced by more than 200 basis points, strengthening CIRSA's profitability.

Our dividend proposal of €75 million to the AGM is going to be representing about 45 cents of euro per share. At the end of the day, nothing new.

We say what we do, and we do what we say. Going to the next chart and continuing with CIRSA highlights, mention that our strategic model is consistently delivering solid and predictable growth.

CIRSA's organic growth comes from our local and resilient, low-wager clients, and on exploiting the omnichannel opportunity we have in all markets. Coolman strategy deployment, product renewals, and full entertainment offer are driving growth year-on-year by training customers and growing new ones recurrently.

A unique and well-balanced diversification by geography and by gaming segment is key on achieving financial targets regardless of business cycles. M&A through accretive bolt-ons takes place in all our fragmented markets, markets where we have longstanding know-how, experience, and recognition.

We have a solid pipeline of targets across the world in land-based and online. We closed several M&As at the end of last year, November and December, and this is clearly reinforcing our inorganic growth for this 2026.

As reported many times, our M&A bolt-ons should represent around 1/3 of our delta revenues and delta EBITDA year-on-year. Our guidance for 2026 is as follows: in revenues, the range would be between €2,500 and €2,560 million.

This is an improvement of between 7% and 9.5%. EBITDA is going to be between €800 and €820 million.

This is an improvement of +6% to +9% with a margin at 32%. Now I am going to hand over to Antonio, who will take us through the business overview.

Antonio Hostench

Thank you, Joaquim, and welcome to everybody on the call. In page number six, I'll start with an overview of the performance of our business portfolio.

Here you can see that in 2025, all our four business units deliver growth both in revenue and EBITDA. The early thing I would like to to highlight here is the remarkable growth that we achieve in our three main business units starting with the online business unit with +26%, Slots +5% revenue growth, and our Casino business unit growing at 4.9% at constant FX.

I also have to say that these last two business units had almost no impact of bolt-on acquisitions, as most of them were completed by the end of Q4 last year. Going to, to page number seven, we have added here all our retail business units to show you its constant and healthy growth profile.

In this perimeter, we have achieved the target that we set up for our retail segments in the guidance we gave you a year ago to be in the mid-to-high, in the mid single digit. We achieved, as you can see, a growth of 4.6%, which would be at local, at constant FX of 6.1%.

This growth, together with our constant search for productivity, both in revenue and cost, allow us to compensate the FX impact, which was €26 million in revenue and €14 million in, in EBITDA, and deliver a higher than, a higher growth in EBITDA than in, in revenues. The growth in EBITDA was 6%, which I think it's, it's remarkable.

As I said, all this with very limited contribution of M&A, as the relevant project that we completed in, in late Q4 last year, which is also setting a good basis for growth for 2026. Now, starting in page eight with our biggest business unit, Casinos.

In Casinos, the organic growth was of +4.9% at constant FX, 2.2% in actual numbers, which is in line with our historical trend. This has been the result of managing along the year 2 million customers that made and visited us 30, 37.5 million times, very relevant numbers.

The growth in our portfolio of countries was led by Colombia, Dominican Republic, Spain, and Morocco. Also important to mention that Panama, after a weak first half, we have seen from August, September on a clear market recovery that we have noted in, into our numbers.

This was not only a recovery of the market, but also due to relevant changes we did in our team in Panama, plus updating several of our casinos there. Also, we shifted a bit our marketing approach, growing to a more local approach than we used to do in the previous quarter, quarters.

In terms of M&A, we closed two transactions in Q4. In November, we closed the acquisition of the casino in Marrakech, the one located in Hotel La Mamounia, a flag, a flagship hotel within Europe.

Right now, we, we own four out of the seven licenses in, in the country. The second acquisition was closed in December.

We acquired four casinos in Peru, which is positioning us as the number one operator in the country. In this business unit, going forward, the strategic hours will be, number one, is to continue updating our gaming and entertainment offer with the best slots and electronic table games that you can find in the market.

We want to maintain our, in our casinos, the best gaming experience for our customers. By the way, in some of these cases, with the suppliers, we have exclusivity periods to, to enjoy those, those slots while our competitors cannot.

The second driver would be the execution of our Goldmine strategy that you know very well. For 2026, we have 18 projects, which most of them are already in process, compared to the 14 that we completed last year, this with, with returns that are in the range of 25% to 30% returns and almost, I would say, at almost no risk.

The third axis would be to keep using our unique technology and best practices toolkit, especially everything what refers to customer data management and CRM, which is an area that we transferred several years ago from our online practice. In the following page, you have the, the Slots Spain business unit.

Here, remember that we are combining two integrated businesses, the main one being the operation of slots in bars, which accounts for 80% of the numbers that you have in this page, and our B2B division that designs games and slots for the Spanish market. I have to say that 2025 was an outstanding year with a growth of 5, 5.4% and achieving an EBITDA of 2,022 million EBITDA.

If you just look at, at the operation of slots in bars, this business grew by 7.4%, which shows the, the health of, of this business in Spain. The main drivers for this growth were our commercial strategy addressing the best-performing bars in, in the country.

A way to look at that is that if you look at the number of A-bars within our portfolio, this percentage grew from '24 to '25 from 40% to 44%. The amount of good bars in our portfolio has grown.

Also, the second driver has been the slot replacement program. This year, we replaced 8,200 slots that have been performing extremely well.

Our B2B unit continues launching new releases of what we have told you many times, the Manhattan slots. We have new releases, new versions of this, of this model.

At ICE, we launched the Manhattan Magic and the Manhattan Premium. As we, were able to test those, those models in advance.

In our case, since August, we, we deployed more than 1,300 slots within our portfolio. This is why you see this, these growth rates in our business.

Again here, in terms of M&A, the main transaction was closed in December 2025, adding 460 slots in the region of Valencia. For 2026, we will continue taking advantage of our vertical integration.

This means that we will be deploying the best games faster than our competitors. Also, the second, let's say, axis to, to improve would be to extend the usage of data that we receive on a daily basis from our 20, 25.5 thousand slots to increase the, the productivity of our operations and our logistics.

That's it for the Slots business in, in Spain. Then I'll jump to, to page number 10 to our online business, the one with the highest growth within our portfolio that in 2025 has increased its total weight on our revenues up to 23%, already playing a big role in our, in our business.

First message here, as Joaquim mentioned, is that we have achieved the commitment that we took a year ago of delivering above €500 million of revenues and €100 million of, of EBITDA. The final actual numbers were €529 million revenues and €104 million EBITDA.

This has been the result of managing 2.6 million unique players along the year that took us to a growth of 25.8% in our revenues. That in a like-for-like perimeter, because here we, we should exclude the first year, the first half of Apuesta Total that we didn't have in 2024, this 25.8% in an organic view would be 13.1%.

Another way to, to see the, the evolution of the, of the business would be looking at the turnover numbers, which is a better indicator of the business performance because it excludes the, the sports betting margins fluctuation from one month to the other. The turnover growth was 37% for 2025.

Again, if you look this in a like-for-like basis taking out the first half of Apuesta Total, the growth was 14.7%, which is pretty much in line with the guidance we gave you for our organic growth in the online channel of above 10%. In terms of EBITDA, as I said, €104 million despite having two months which the industry experienced unusual customer-friendly results.

For 2026, we have four big priorities or topics that we will follow in the coming months. Number one, we want to keep a very competitive sports betting platform both in terms of content as well as in core functionalities.

In 2025, we implemented the BetBuilder, the cash-outs, the early payouts functionalities. For 2026, we have already in the pipeline the substitute functionality, will include predictive markets, will improve also streaming, and some other betting functionalities.

Point number two will be, will be to improve the mobile UX and the end-to-end customer journeys through using, well, softwares that are giving us analytical information around that. Third axis for 2026 will be, and I think this a, a hell of a good opportunity for us to grow, is to enhance and differentiate the casino offering.

We want to expand the portfolio with exclusive content. To give you some examples, during 2025, we added more than 2,000 games and live casino games across all operations.

For 2026, we'll be implementing on a monthly basis around, from 60 to 100 new titles every month in our main markets, and we'll be looking for exclusive branded slots for each operation, for each operation. Also around the casino offering, we will make a progressive rollout of gamification features to increase the frequency and loyalty of our customers.

The fourth point I would like to highlight here would be that we want to continue leveraging the CRM as a direct growth engine by increasing the use of real-time triggers and personalized journeys supported by AI tools. Now, I'll leave it to Antonio Grau to follow with the financial presentation chapter.

Antonio Grau

Thanks, Antonio. Good morning, everyone.

To start with the financial results presentation, first I would like to begin by highlighting our performance in cash generation. This is a critical metric for our company, and once again, we have delivered outstanding results with a 17% increase in pre-operating cash flow before M&A.

This structurally strong cash generation is supported by two key pillars. First of them is a best-in-class EBITDA margin of 32%, comfortably above our longstanding target of being above 30%, and second, a highly efficient, high return CapEx profile representing only 8.2% of revenues.

We have already discussed EBITDA growth and its contribution to cash generation, let me now highlight two effects within the year which offset each other. On one hand, we made a €21 million license payment for our online business in Italy securing the next nine years without further payments for this concept, and on the other hand, we benefited from a favorable timing effect in gaming tax payments amounting to approximately €15 million which will unwind in 2026.

Overall, these effects balanced out and we have delivered an excellent cash generation performance totally €394 million of cash generated in the year. Moving on to earnings evolution, that's in slide 13.

Thank you. While EBITDA increased by 6.8%, you can see that our net profit rose by 165% and adjusted net profit by 47.6%.

This is reflecting an improved operating leverage. Brief remark on the numbers for your better understanding.

Our 2025 financial expenses include €12 million of non-recurring cancellation costs which were mostly incurred in Q4 with the refinancing of €1 billion in bonds that we performed late October. Looking ahead, combining our ability to grow net profit ahead of EBITDA with the expected significant reduction in financial expenses in 2026, which I remind you will be approximately €60 million savings, and I remind you important, that's with no corporate tax impact, so that's direct improvement to the bottom line, we see obviously very positive prospects for further improvements in both net profit and adjusted net profit in 2026.

Going same slide, shareholder remuneration now. First comment on our adjusted earnings per share that increased by 35%, reaching €1.37 per share.

Following our 35% dividend payout policy on adjusted net profit, we are proposing a dividend of €0.45 per share which we expect to pay in full at the beginning of May after the AGM takes place. Moreover, and this is important, the expected improvement in adjusted net profit in 2026 supports the potential for a significant uplift in the dividend for the distribution of 2026 results.

I'll move now to capital structure, slide 14. Yeah.

Year-end leverage of 2.7 times, we have met our target of 2.75 times leverage representing a 1.1 notch reduction during the year. There's a slight uptick in Q4 of 0.1 notches in leverage ratio, which is entirely attributable to the fact that most of our M&A activity was concentrated in Q4.

In addition to reducing debt, we have also significantly strengthened our liquidity, increasing our cash position to €672 million. That's €122 million over 2024 year-end or 22% increase.

Would like to reiterate once more our mid-term steady-state leverage range of 2 to 2.5 times. Let me close finally by emphasizing that our balance sheet remains robust and well-positioned.

This gives us both the financial flexibility and the operational capacity to continue investing in value-accretive opportunities. Together with our strong and resilient cash generation, we are able to self-fund around €150 million of M&A activity every year while fully meeting our financial obligations, sustaining progressive dividend growth supported by improved earnings, and continuing to reduce our leverage ratio.

With that, I hand back to Antonio.

Antonio Hostench

Thank you, Toni. Now I'll start with the future growth plans in page 16.

One premise that is not written here is that our industry is growing in all our markets and channels, maybe with the only exception of Italy, of the retail channel in Italy because of very restrictive regulation, but for all our markets and channels, our industry is growing. This is due basically to, first of all, the under-penetration of gaming in this market compared to the more developed ones, and also the good macroeconomic environment that we have in the, let's say, selected countries that we are in.

Remember that we speak about Latin America, but we are in the selected countries that we decided to be. On the page where you have how to capture this growth, first of all, in organic terms, we have our main business-as-usual activities, most of them already commented.

Summarizing, I would say, the number one is that we want to keep a top gaming and entertainment offer in both channels. We are continuously searching for new game suppliers, new slots, new live casino suppliers, and new advanced electronic tables options.

That's number one. Also, second, we are using advanced tools and software to verify that the user experience and customer journeys are competitive because we want to improve the level of satisfaction of our 6.2 million unique customers across the markets.

The third axis is that it is in our DNA, the words productivity and efficiency. Nowadays, most of our plans are coming through the development of technology and the use of AI that allow us to automate manual operational processes and also being faster to execute, especially in the online channel.

Together with these business-as-usual activities, we are supporting the business by our CapEx plan mainly in three lines: Goldmine strategy, expanding our best-performing casinos; second, the slot replacement program, especially in the slot business in Spain and Italy; and thirdly, investing in technology and our gaming platforms in all channels. With this, organic activities would be complemented by M&A in two ways: bolt-ons, already commented, you know that all our markets are highly fragmented, and the options to keep consolidating the market are huge.

In this case, what's new here is that we have started to explore larger projects not only in LatAm, but also in Europe, where we have seen that we have markets that fulfill our strategic criteria, and also the potential synergies with our operations are very high. Doing all this, we are convinced that we'll benefit the shareholder value.

We'll have higher earnings, more financial resources to invest in growth, and increase the dividends to the shareholders. Now, going to the numbers in page 17, where you have the guidance.

This guidance is not only based on my previous page and all the plans that we have developed that go into very big details for quarterly plans in every single casino or online operation, but are also based on a very good start of the year. In January, stars were aligned.

We had black numbers in all our operations, which is something that we have not seen for the past maybe 24 months in every single operation. Not only that, but also the sports results were in our favor.

February also started this similar trend, but maybe the sports betting margins were not as good as in January, but all in all, this has been a very good start of the year. Very good, very solid start to commit to this guidance.

Now going to the numbers, we'll follow the same figures that we gave you in our three years plans before the IPO. In terms of revenue, we expect to grow in the mid-to-high single digits, and this is a combination of a mid single digit in the retail businesses plus a more than 10% growth in the online business.

In EBITDA terms, our guidance is to be in the range from €800 to €820 million, reflecting the mid-to-high single-digit growth and the continued operating leverage. EBITDA margin, if you then make the math, will be above 30%, 30% to 32%.

On top of our regular CapEx from 7% to 9%, M&A will continue to contribute around 1/3 of our growth for the year, as Joaquim commented at the starting of the presentation. Lastly, the dividend proposal of the Board of Directors to the April shareholders meeting will be of €75 million, which is following our policy of 35% of the net adjusted profit.

That's it from my side. The final remarks will be done by Joaquim.

Joaquim Agut

Toni, thank you very much. You have seen that CIRSA strategy and our execution works.

We have achieved 70 consecutive quarters growing EBITDA. The second point I'd like to make is about our unique diversification.

Diversification is a real key pillar of our consistent financial delivery regardless business cycles. 2026 is another year where we have a strong set of opportunities where growth will come from both sides, as Antonio explained, organic and bolt-ons.

We are ready for another interesting acquisition, especially in the online arena. The management team is fully committed to deliver ultimate value, and will deliver an attractive dividend policy plus earnings growth and cash flow generation, as it has been deeply said during the call.

2026 guidance, I'll repeat it once again: in revenues, we are going to be between €2,500 and €2,560 million, +7% to +9.5% variation year-on-year. EBITDA will be in the range between €800 and €820 million.

This is an improvement between +6% and +9%. Dividend proposal, also mentioned several times for 2025, is €75 million, corresponding to 45 cents of euro per share.

A last point about ESG, which matters to CIRSA, and responsible gaming. We have a focus and we want to keep our leadership in our industry in such an important area for the company.

This is it. From now on, we would love to take your questions.

Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press * followed by 1 on your telephone keypads now.

If you feel your question has been answered or for any reason you would like to remove yourself from the queue, please press * followed by 2. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure device is unmuted locally.

Our first question comes from Ricardo Benavides from Santander. Your line is now open.

Please go ahead.

Ricardo Benavides

Hello, all. Thank you.

Three questions from my end. Firstly, regarding these M&A priorities and your interest in European markets, what would you say are the most interesting countries right now to look at other than Spain?

Then I have two questions on the online gaming segment. Firstly, have you in 2026 current trading seen any type of anomalous behavior in terms of sports results that could have affected you like in September or October last year?

Lastly, I just want to double-check something I heard now during the presentation. Did I hear you correctly saying that you're considering to implement substitutive functionalities of predictive markets in your online gaming offering?

If so is the case, do you still maintain your view of what you stated last quarter that you believe there is no real competition from these prediction market players? Thank you.

Antonio Hostench

Okay. Let me start by the countries question.

Let me tell you the opposite way. We are not considering the purely Eastern European countries, where we think regulation, compliance, and so forth is not so clear.

You can keep out of the formula Bulgaria, Romania, the old Soviet republics. What we are looking for is opportunities in the Western Europe, the traditional Western Europe, France and above France.

Second thing, on the online, we have not seen any anomalous behavior. What I just said is that in January, results were in our favor.

Of course, you know that along the year, this usually compensates. We haven't seen anything special.

I don't know if you have any specific question, but we have not noticed anything new on this. Regarding predictive, we have the same idea.

We don't think this is going to be competition for us. Because of regulation, this is impossible to happen in our markets.

We thought that maybe during the year, we can add those options in our offering, which I don't think will mean a big thing, but it's always nice to add new features and new options in our offering. Yeah.

Ricardo Benavides

A quick follow-up on that, then. Would you be rolling out prediction markets throughout both Europe and Latin America, or is it just regarding any specific geography?

Antonio Hostench

We will start with Spain, but this is not going to be a big priority for us. This is just an example of new markets that will be adding into our sports betting offering.

Ricardo Benavides

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Francisco Ruiz-Alarco from Alantra.

Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Francisco Riquel

Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions.

I want to ask about margins. First, Slots Spain, you have reported another quarter with above 50% margin.

I wonder if above 50% should be the new normal, if you can update on the guidance for margins in Slots Spain. In online, margins have actually fallen a bit in '25.

You were guiding for an improvement to mid-20s. If you can update on your margin guidance for the online business for '26 and medium term.

Finally, for the group, EBITDA growth will be 1 percentage point below revenue growth. If you can comment on the reasons for this margin pressure in '26, if it is related to the business mix or if it is also like-for-like by business.

Thank you. Hello?

Antonio Hostench

I'll start again. I thought we were on mute.

Sorry. I'll start with the margins.

In the operations business in Spain, we're going to stay with a target of being above 45%. We think what we have achieved in 2025 was extraordinary.

We want to keep our target above 45%. In online betting and gaming, you're right.

We are in the range of 20%, but our aim is to move this to 25% in the coming two years. You have to also understand that this also has a lot to do the sports betting margin depending on how friendly are the sports results to our customers.

Again, the target remains to move to mid-20s. Regarding your question about being margin with pressure a bit down, we are working in all sort of productivity plans to really catch up and align more our cost increase with the revenue increase.

Okay.

Francisco Riquel

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ed Young from Morgan Stanley.

Ed, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Ed Young

Thank you. I've also got three, please.

I just wondered if you could give a bit of color on what you're seeing on the consumer demand picture across your different markets. Organic has clearly been a bit stronger than perhaps you or we expected over the course of '25.

You talked about normalization in a couple of your countries, just an update on what you're seeing from a consumer behavior point of view would be helpful on a geographic basis. The second is on online growth, as you mentioned, 13% underlying ex-M&A, nearly 15% turnover growth.

How should we think about online growth into next year? You've given some very light color on it, but we've also got the World Cup, can you help us think through growth into '26 in online?

Then finally, you've mentioned in the presentation you're ready for another AT experience. Could you just talk about what the context looks like for M&A at the moment in online in terms of targets, seller valuations, etc.?

Thank you.

Antonio Hostench

I'll start with the consumer demand. What we're seeing, as I said, the industry is growing everywhere in all our markets.

Let's say, in the European markets, those growth rates would be below 5%. In Latin America, I am talking now at the retail businesses, below 5% in Europe, above 5% in Latin America.

As I said, our slot business in Spain last year grew 7% with almost no M&A, it's very healthy. The online business, overall, our plans include a growth of above 10% in any market where we are in.

That is a situation of the market. Now going to online, we see the World Cup as a step up in terms of customer acquisition, but it depends a lot in terms of bottom line of how the scores evolve.

If we have, I don't know, Germany, England, or Argentina winning the World Cup, I'm sure the margin will be very poor. If we have Indonesia winning the World Cup, the margins would be great.

We see this an opportunity to capture new demand, which has been the case in the major sports events, especially the World Cup. We see going forward, what you said, the turnover growth for last year was almost 15%.

This is where we see the organic growth of our business. We have mentioned this many times that if we want to grow the weight of the online business in a portfolio where all the retail business are also growing, will need to go through M&A.

Joaquim well mentioned that we have in the pipeline several, I would say, two good opportunities to build a strong position in one of the existing markets. I cannot disclose many details around it.

Joaquim Agut

It will take some time. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Luis Chinchilla from Deutsche Bank.

Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Luis Chinchilla

Hey. Thank you so much for taking the questions.

I wanted to start very briefly with Mexico. Have you guys seen any impact or suffered any impact from the cartel activity this week, and do you anticipate that this would materially impact operations there?

Yeah.

Joaquim Agut

We had 10 casinos closed an average of 2.5 days. Seems yesterday, the 100% of the casinos are fully running, open, and without having any problem in terms of visits and customers' consumption.

Luis Chinchilla

Perfect. Thank you.

Touching upon prediction markets and your appetite for M&A, do you guys anticipate that perhaps some of the acquisition targets might be in the technology front, or do you guys anticipate that you have enough technological capacities to make these offerings without having to go to market to acquire them?

Antonio Hostench

We don't need to go to acquire technology for sure. We see this as a marginal improvement, and we can do that on our own and based with good agreements with third-party suppliers.

Luis Chinchilla

Wonderful. Thank you.

That's all I had.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Karina Elias from Barclays.

Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Karina Elias

Hi, thanks a lot for the presentation and thanks for taking my questions. Obviously, you've mentioned that the 2028 are probably the next bonds that you're looking to refinance, but just with the dividend now being paid, is it safe to assume that the payments on the PIK probably will be done in cash, and is the intention to potentially look to refinance those PIKs simultaneously than what you're doing on the 2028?

Thank you.

Joaquim Agut

Sorry, Karina. This is a decision by one of our shareholders, so that needs to be asked to them, and no, that's something.

We will be paying the dividend beginning of May, that's a decision from them, what to do with that.

Karina Elias

Understood. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Richard Stuber from Deutsche Bank.

Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Richard Stuber

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions.

Two, please, if that's okay. The first one is could you say what the EBITDA contribution you expect to achieve from the three acquisitions that you made in December?

That's my first question, to see sort of how far we are in terms of how much of the incremental EBITDA is already in the bag. The second question again on M&A, could you just give us your latest thoughts on entering Brazil and again whether this would be via organic or inorganic means?

Thank you.

Antonio Hostench

Yes. First question, the balance of the acquisitions we did last year impacting in 2026 as incremental EBITDA would be of €14.5 million.

Regarding Brazil, we stay at the same point. I just read a few days ago that 51% of the Brazilian market is still offshore, we have no intention the short term to approach that market.

You're right, in case we decide to go there whenever everything is normalized and under control, we'll go through an M&A.

Joaquim Agut

God knows when.

Richard Stuber

Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question is from Pravin Gondhale from Barclays.

Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Pravin Gondhale

Hi, good morning. Congratulations on the results and thanks for taking my questions.

My sort of first question is on the full-year guidance. The guidance implies flattish EBITDA margins with EBITDA growth lower than the top-line growth.

Appreciate the faster online growth is dilutive to margins, but in 2025, we had few headwinds like adverse sports results and IPO payments or softer casino performance in Mexico and Panama in H1, which is recovering now. Could you please sort of elaborate a bit more on your embedded assumptions for different divisions in the guidance and what drives the conservatism for the EBITDA growth guidance there?

Thank you.

Antonio Hostench

Yes, about the margin, I think we need to remark that we think a 32% margin is a very good margin, by the way. It's not under pressure, but as we are increasing the weight of the online segment, which has a lower margin than the retail businesses.

This is why we cannot keep improving. As Joaquim said, on the opposite side, we are working in many efficiency plans within the company to compensate that growth in the online channel.

Our margins remain above that target of 30%. If you make the average of the guidance, would be in the 32% for 2026.

Pravin Gondhale

Thank you. A follow-up to that.

Could you help us what was the sports results impact in 2025 on online margins both for revenue and EBITDA, if that would be helpful? Thank you.

Antonio Grau

Sorry, Pravin. Could you repeat that question?

We didn't catch the beginning of it.

Pravin Gondhale

What was the impact of adverse sports results in 2025 both for revenue and EBITDA in online?

Antonio Grau

The impact in 2025

Antonio Hostench

of what?

Antonio Grau

What did you say? Sorry.

Pravin Gondhale

Adverse online sports results. Sports results impact.

Antonio Grau

In 2025.

Joaquim Agut

GGR margin dropped compared to our average in the range of 350, 400 basis points. In Q4.

In Q4. Oh,

Pravin Gondhale

thank you very much. This is really helpful.

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Shelley from UBS.

Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Ben Shelley

Hi. Thanks taking my questions, and thanks for the presentation.

Three for me, if I may. How should we think about casino revenue growth in 2026?

Should it be similar on a constant currency basis to 2025? Then on the M&A cash outflow line for 2026, can you just give us a sort of a starting point as to where we should base our expectations?

Then lastly, you've outlined financial expense savings in your release. Could you give us an early idea of what cash financial expenses should be for 2026?

Thank you.

Antonio Hostench

Yes. In the casino segment, you should expect a similar trend that we had last year, around 5% growth in the overall business unit.

Toni,

Joaquim Agut

sorry to correct you. The growth that we have had the last 20 years.

Yes.

Antonio Hostench

About M&A, I don't know if I heard you well, but the plan considers to keep that €500 million in three years. We should be investing around €150 million.

This, of course, would take place along the year. What is coming from the previous year would be around €14 million of EBITDA that will be brought in 2026.

Antonio Grau

Let me comment you that in 2025 in terms of cash flow from M&A, we had a significant amount coming from a previous year acquisition, Apuesta Total, we had €150 million which impacted in 2025. In 2026, we have hardly no payments coming from the year before, the investment we do will correspond to acquisitions performed during 2026.

As we said, as of now, aligned to the plan that we explained to you of this €500 in three years, which would be around €150 per year, which is a figure that allows us to pay the dividend, to pay, and I'll comment in a second the financial cash cost, okay, to pay the financial cost, to pay the dividend, and still to reduce leverage ratio, yeah. Going to financial cash for next year, I mentioned about a €60 million savings for next year.

You can think of cash payments in the range of €125 to €130 million, okay? That's more or less where we should be by next year, which could correspond in terms of financial accounting cost, let me say P&L not cash, somewhere around a bit north of €140 million.

That's where we should be.

Ben Shelley

Guys, that's really clear. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Fabio Pavan from Mediobanca.

Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Fabio Pavan

Yes, hi. Good morning, and congrats for the good numbers.

Few questions. First one is on casinos.

If I'm right, there should be an acceleration in Goldmine projects to 16, 18 for this year. It is fair to assume impact would be fully visible on '27 numbers?

Second question is a follow-up on online. You managed to exceed the guidance for '25, is there any guidance you can share with us for '26?

I think I will stop it here. Thank you.

Antonio Hostench

For the casinos, you're right. We're jumping from 14 to 18.

We are in the range of the number of projects that we accomplish every year. Just to give you an example, within the two casino Well, within the five casinos we acquired by the end of the year, we are already starting those sort of activities to improve and enlarge those casinos.

This is, I would say, an average what you would see in the coming years.

Joaquim Agut

Not only that. That is what makes us this constant growth of 5% every year during the last 20 years because this is our business-as-usual practice that we keep implementing all the time.

Antonio Hostench

With regards to online, we are not providing here a guidance for the year, but I think if you take the numbers that I've said that will be growing above 10% with a similar or maybe a bit better margin for the year, you can make the math.

Joaquim Agut

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Joanna Saw from UBS.

Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Joanna Saw

Hi. Apologies, my question has been answered already.

Antonio Hostench

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Clark Lampen from BTIG.

Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Clark Lampen

Thanks very much. I will follow on the trend of some of my peers and ask three here, if I may.

Could you clarify, I guess, whether the guidance for over 10% growth in the online segment in '26 contemplates any M&A contribution, I assume that's a fully organic number, but I guess I'm just curious if you guys could provide a little bit more context around maybe the likelihood of M&A? Second question on the casino business.

I think, Antonio, last quarter, you had mentioned that a lot of the Goldmine projects had already started and could be completed relatively earlier in 2026. Is it fair to think that we'll start to see the contribution in the first half of the year?

Third question, I guess, maybe circling back to prediction. I'm sorry if I'm harping on a point that maybe you guys see as sort of less consequential, but the shift in tone around prediction this quarter relative to last, and I think if I heard right previously, you are considering launching prediction in Spain first, maybe a little bit later in the year, around the midpoint of the year.

Could you help us just understand what went into that decision, particularly because I think if I have it right, it's sort of banned in that country. Help us just, I guess, flesh that out a little bit more and understand sort of what went into that decision.

Thank you guys very much. I appreciate it.

Antonio Hostench

Okay. Question number one on the online growth, we are expecting that +10% coming just from purely organic growth.

If anything new comes into the company, that will be added to that +10% growth. The Goldmines, I cannot say that this is going to happen in the first half of the year because one of the main rules that we have in our Goldmine projects that is that we cannot interfere the day-to-day operations.

This is done in different phases. We start by one piece of the casino, then the other one, the other one.

This is why this is happening along all 2026. Around prediction markets, this is not an issue in our markets, as we said previously.

This had no impact in our markets because of regulation, restrictions, the prediction operators, Polymarket and so on, are not operating in our markets. This is just adding a new different content into our portfolio, but we don't expect big things coming out of this.

Joaquim Agut

Let me add one thing that may help you to understand this prediction issue. In European countries, especially in many of them, what is not allowed by law is forbidden.

You don't have illegal things happening. No, that's illegal.

Antonio Hostench

This means that any prediction market would require a gaming license, would require paying taxes, would require everything.

Joaquim Agut

Would

Antonio Hostench

require

Joaquim Agut

a specific regulation to make that happening. Otherwise, it's forbidden.

Antonio Hostench

Exactly. It's impossible to replicate what you've seen in the States with the regulations in our countries, to be clear.

Joaquim Agut

Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. We currently have no further questions, I'll hand back over to you, Joaquim Agut, for closing remarks.

Joaquim Agut

Thank you very much.

Antonio Hostench

The doors of our investor relations and finance team will remain open to any further questions that may come in the coming days.

Joaquim Agut

Hope to see several of you in the coming days and weeks. Thank you very much.

Antonio Hostench

Thank you very much.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining us.

You may now disconnect your lines.