Operator
Welcome to Hacksaw's Q1 earnings call for 2026. During the questions and answers session, participants are able to ask questions by dialing pound key 5 on their telephone keypad.
Now I will hand the conference over to Group CEO Christoffer Källberg and Group CFO Mikael Rahm. Please go ahead.
Christoffer Källberg
Good morning, everyone. Thank you for dialing in to our earnings call.
I will start with commenting on our performance during the quarter before handing over to Mike for a closer look at our financials. After that, I will conclude with key takeaways before we open the floor for questions.
We start 2026 with a strong quarter, both operationally and financially. Q1 was another star quarter in terms of operational accomplishments.
We closed 79 new deals across all regions and with both existing and new clients. We secured a Connecticut license, an important step as we strive to follow our clients across their prioritized markets.
We developed 12 new in-house games, and 15 games were developed by our third-party studios on OpenRGS. We welcomed Foxhound Games as a new studio during the quarter, and GoodTimes Studios after the end of the quarter.
Today, we have 10 studios that have developed games on our platform. During the quarter, we agreed with Jinx Gaming, one of our OpenRGS studios, that we would invest in them in order to help them further grow.
We did this investment under Hacksaw Ventures, where our aim is to allocate, relatively speaking, small amounts of capital to promising ventures when we believe that we can make a difference by backing the entrepreneurs, utilizing our platform, distribution, and industry knowledge. We generated revenue of €58 million in Q1, and €210 million during the last 12 months, equivalent of 37 and 43% growth respectively, adjusted for FX.
All growth is organic. Our EBIT margin came in at 82% in Q1, which is in line with the margin for the last 12 months.
We continue to generate significant cash, and free cash flow amounted to €43 million in Q1, and a 93% cash conversion rate in the last 12 months. As we've stated before, we estimate our global market share to be a low single-digit percentage, and I remain of the opinion that we have a very strong proposition and should continue to grow faster than the market.
Our Q1 results is good evidence thereof. In-house developed games, we released 12 fully in-house developed games during the quarter, and have released 48 games during the last 12 months that you can see on the page in front of you.
We continue to expand our development team, and we expect to increase the release cadence over time. We continue to see a strong reception of newly released games from both operators and players, and we continue to see strong interest for our wider catalog.
Our third-party studios released 15 games during the quarter, and 53 during the last 12 months. As we've pointed out before, the cadence of third-party developed game releases quarter-to-quarter may fluctuate slightly, given that several studios are working in parallel.
As a reminder, OpenRGS studios develop the front end, while we develop the back end. We own the OpenRGS games, we take full responsibility for the games in terms of compliance, and we distribute the games using our existing commercial agreements with our customers.
After the end of Q1, we welcomed GoodTimes as a new partner studio, thereby becoming the tenth studio that has released a game on our platform. Also finally, we expect the existing studios will increase the release cadence over time, and we will continue to onboard new studios.
We've recently onboarded, on average, one studio per quarter. Turning to the operational performance indicators, at the end of the quarter, we had 320 games live in our portfolio, up from 236 a year earlier.
One of the key metrics we follow is the number of rounds played on these games. With rounds, we focus on the average daily number of rounds played, given the varying number of days across months and quarters.
The daily number of rounds during the last 12 months was 43% higher than the 12-month period that ended a year ago. The average bet size for these rounds will naturally vary, both across markets and over time.
The outcome of those bets, in other words, whether players are winning or loses [unclear] losing, will by definition vary, and short terms, sometimes be above and sometimes below the mathematical mean. In addition, our take rate on the gross gaming revenue is subject to a mix effect between clients and jurisdictions.
Therefore, the development of rounds versus revenue is not fully correlated from period to period. With that, I will hand over to Mike to go through the financials.
Mikael Rahm
Many thanks, Chris, and hi, everyone. If we take a closer look at the numbers for the first quarter, revenues amounted to €58 million, which was up €13 million or 28% versus last year.
Similar to last year, revenues for Q1 were negatively impacted by currency movements compared to the same period last year. On a constant currency basis, the Q1 revenue growth was 37%.
This growth is entirely organic and primarily driven by the number of rounds played, which comes from additional games released and continued growth in our customer base. Moving to the expense side, for Q1, our adjusted operating expenses amounted to €10.2 million, which was up €2.5 million compared to last year, and reflected the following drivers.
First, our personnel expenses continued to increase as we continue to invest in new talent, primarily within game development and distribution, in order to capitalize on the market opportunities and enable continued revenue growth. We will continue to invest in talent, an investment that gives us the best possible return given the opportunities we see.
This was partly offset by increased capitalization of development expenses. Note that from this quarter, we accrue for annual bonuses throughout the year instead of expensing them in December, and this impacted Q1 by €0.4 million compared to last year.
Second, our cost of services sold was up, mainly due to the increase of OpenRGS revenues and to higher license fees. As we have discussed in earlier presentations, the growth in OpenRGS increases our revenues and profits in euros, but slightly reduces the average margin.
OpenRGS remains below 10% of revenue. Should this materially change going forward, we will provide additional information in due course.
Finally, depreciation and amortization increased, primarily related to the continued investments in capitalized game development expenses. Our adjusted EBIT for Q1 amounted to €47 million, which was up €10 million or 27% versus last year.
The EBIT margin for Q1 was 82%, which is in line with recent quarters. If we move further down the P&L, financial expenses declined from last year, as Q1 last year included a one-time financial expense item of €5 million relating to the FX impacts on dividends that year.
In terms of tax, our effective tax rate for Q1 was 4.9%, compared to 6.3% last year. This all leads to that our net income for Q1 amounted to €45 million, which was up €15 million or 51% versus last year.
Our fully diluted earnings per share reached €0.157. Adjusted for the one-time financial expense in 2025 mentioned earlier, net income was up 30% versus last year.
Now, if we look a bit closer at cash flows, our Q1 cash flow from operating activities before changes in working capital amounted to €49 million and was up 45% year-on-year. As mentioned earlier, Q1 last year included a one-time financial expense of €5 million relating to the FX impact on dividends.
Adjusted for this, cash flow from operating activities before changes in working capital was up 26% year-on-year. Changes in working capital reduced cash flow by €3 million in Q1, primarily due to our revenue growth, which obviously leads to higher receivables and accrued revenues.
Last year, changes in working capital included positive one-time items relating to the dividend payment totaling €11 million, which means that the underlying change in working capital, adjusted for these items, is therefore an improvement versus last year despite our growth, which is the result of improved working capital management by the team. This leads to that our total Q1 cash flow from operating activities therefore amounted to €46 million and was up 32% year-on-year when adjusting for the one-time items incurred last year mentioned earlier.
Our free cash flow for the quarter reached €43 million, which is 30 31% higher than last year when adjusting for the one-time items incurred last year mentioned earlier. We maintain a very strong free cash flow conversion rate of 93%.
This metric shows our ability to convert profit into free cash flow and is calculated as free cash flow for the last 12 months divided by EBITDA for the same period. Our Q1 CapEx of €2 million increased given our continued investments in game development, and it mostly comprises capitalized expenses related to the development of new games, functional improvements to our technical platform, and investments in patents and trademarks.
We made no major investments in tangible assets during the quarter. Finally, in terms of our financial position, it continues to be very strong, and we further improved our cash balance during the quarter.
Our total cash and cash equivalents amounted to €176 million at the end of March, compared to €133 million at the end of December and €26 million at the end of March last year. Note that a dividend of €106 million was made in March last year, and a dividend of €116 million is planned in March of this year—planned and decided, sorry, May this year.
We still have no interest-bearing debt. That's it for my comments, back to you, Chris.
Christoffer Källberg
Thank you, Mike. Summarizing the quarter, we should be very proud of what we have achieved.
We continue to release more content, both in-house and via third-party studios. We continue to onboard third-party studios that we believe will complement our offering.
We signed a large number of new deals with existing and new clients around the world. We continue to deliver strong revenue growth, and we maintain high margins and strong cash conversion.
We initiated Hacksaw Ventures. Looking ahead, we continue to face a very attractive market opportunity, and we are in a better than ever position to capitalize on it.
I would like to thank the entire team for the great work being done during the quarter, and to all of our shareholders for your continued support. With that, I would like to hand it back to the operator for any questions.
Operator
If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad.
The next question comes from Martin Arnell from DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Martin Arnell
Hi. Good morning, Mikael and Christoffer.
Christoffer Källberg
Morning, Martin.
Martin Arnell
I have a few questions. I'll start with a question on Europe actually.
There's been discussions in the sector about regulatory headwinds and channelization, and some turbulence in Southeast Europe. What is your view on the effects on your business from this?
Christoffer Källberg
First and foremost, when it comes to Europe and any region, we are very diversified, right? We've had no country that accounts for more than 10% of revenue, or no jurisdiction, meaning that even when we do see developments in individual jurisdictions, may they be positive or negative, it has a limited impact on our total revenues.
We read the same articles you do when it comes to channelization. I can't say that they're right or wrong, but I do think that is a challenge in some of the markets, indeed.
Martin Arnell
You did this near 40% constant currency sales growth despite sort of macro uncertainties, et cetera. How would you say that sort of the main contributors to that growth—I guess it's both the new games and the existing—are you still in a size where one single game can make a real difference here on the top-line growth when you release these new games?
Christoffer Källberg
Sure. From that point of view, I suppose there's no ceiling how good a new game could be, right?
Theoretically, the answer would be yes, a single game could make a difference. Having said that, we take a portfolio approach to this, and we always strive to make sure that we have several releases that we consider good releases much more than we hope for a blockbuster here and there, which we would see as lower quality of earnings.
I think what you're getting at is, do individual releases impact our results? Of course they do.
Once we have a few stronger releases in a row, we have a positive impact from that. If we have a few more lukewarm releases in a row, we have a slightly negative impact.
Either way, that doesn't change our view on the longer term.
Martin Arnell
In general, do you think that you had stronger successes of the new releases in this quarter compared to Q4?
Christoffer Källberg
Not that much of a difference, I would say, to be honest.
Martin Arnell
Okay.
Christoffer Källberg
Not a material change.
Martin Arnell
How do you feel about the pipeline for the next coming quarters, Q2, Q3, for example?
Christoffer Källberg
We feel good about the pipeline for the coming quarters.
Martin Arnell
You mentioned in the report that you enter Q2 with solid momentum and great confidence. Does that mean that the underlying sales growth year-on-year has continued to trend in the same range as in Q1 so far in April?
Christoffer Källberg
That I never, even for myself, comment on short periods such as sort of weeks or even a month, because there's always ups and downs. What you can read into that comment is that we don't see any worries on the horizon as we enter Q2, which of course, if you go back a year, we had a more challenging start to Q2 last year.
Martin Arnell
Perfect. Thanks.
My final question is on the US expansion case. Can you remind us what the main focus area is right now, what you look forward to the most here in the near term when it comes to the US, and also how your games are being received by US operators and the audience over there?
Thank you.
Christoffer Källberg
Yeah. If we start with the priorities of the US, first, if we take one step back, I reiterate my view that in the longer term, the US presents a great opportunity for us.
In the short to medium term, I think it's sometimes being overstated. Remember that in the US with main regulating, we have approximately 40 million people in the US who live in regulated states, so that's around 12% of the population, around 12% of GDP.
It's still a relatively small market from that perspective as is right now. However, the longer-term projections, what if we expect that more states will regulate over time, is of course very big.
When it comes to our priorities, we have relationships and we have games live with all of the key operators in all of the states that we operate in. We have a, relatively speaking, small share of wallet.
The focus from our point of view, if I look at operational, is to continue to work with these operators and continue to ensure that we can be their supplier of choice as they continue to grow in these markets. That is something we don't change overnight.
That's something that takes a bit of time. I think we're progressing well, but it's a marathon to get it done.
When it comes to games specifically, I think what you're alluding to is that we do have different game preferences among US players in general compared to what we see elsewhere in the world. What that means is that the games that are successful for us in the US are not necessarily the same games that are successful in other jurisdictions, meaning that when we work with the operators and when we demonstrate our games in the US, the work is slightly different than we would find elsewhere.
That, as we've talked about before, to a large extent, is due to the fact that they have a much stronger land-based legacy than you find in other jurisdictions, and as a result of that, the player preferences are slightly different.
Martin Arnell
Perfect. Thank you for that, both answers.
Christoffer Källberg
Thank you, Martin.
Operator
The next question comes from Jamie Bass from Citi. Please go ahead.
Jamie Bass
Morning, Chris. Morning, Mike.
Christoffer Källberg
Morning. Morning.
Jamie Bass
Just three questions from me, please. I know you said it was less than 10%, but could you give us more of an idea of where OpenRGS is tracking as in, are we getting close to that 10% level?
Second question, on cost of services, you said it was up year-on-year, but a couple of things: one, as a percentage of revenue, it's materially lower, and also it's actually down quarter-on-quarter despite the revenue being up. Could you give us an idea of the moving parts there, why that's come down, where the scaling is?
Then finally, are there just any particular games, whether that's 1P or OpenRGS, that you thought performed particularly well in the quarter that you'd like to call out? Thank you.
Christoffer Källberg
Sure. Let me do your first and third question, and then I'll hand over to Mike for the second one.
With OpenRGS, we continue to say that it's less than 10%. It is growing.
As I've said before, its growth is a little bit more volatile, which is quite natural given that we're talking about now 10 studios in different stages of their journey. It remains below 10, but it's growing.
We haven't disclosed a single number. We've before said that it's more than 5, so that's the range you can play with for now.
As I've said before, once we see that initial volatility of growth come down, and once we see that being a bigger part of our total revenues, we will come back to the market with more information, but that time is not now. It will be sometime in the future.
When it comes to games, the question is a little bit similar to what I just discussed with Martin, right? We don't have specific games that really made the quarter, to speak.
We definitely had a few releases that were perhaps a little bit more successful than we would have anticipated, and a few that were perhaps a little bit less than we would have anticipated. That's always the case.
We've seen that in every single quarter and every single month. I think if I summarize the quarter when it comes to releases, both from our in-house develop studios and third-party studios, there're no surprises.
It is very much overall what we would have expected.
Mikael Rahm
Sorry, your question about was cost of services sold, right? I think that no major things, but these expenses can fluctuate and they don't grow sort of consecutively.
I think that nothing major, but these expenses can fluctuate, and means both revenue share to OpenRGS studios, but it's also license fees across the world.
Jamie Bass
That makes sense. Thank you.
Christoffer Källberg
Thank you.
Operator
The next question comes from Hjalmar Ahlberg from Redeye. Please go ahead.
Hjalmar Ahlberg
Morning. Thank you.
Maybe just a question, you mentioned that you continue to add employees, and you saw potential for increasing the release pace of in-house games eventually. Can you cast some more flavor on that?
Could it be this year, or would be interesting to hear.
Christoffer Källberg
We haven't communicated a specific date when we step up the cadence, I would revert back to what I've said before, which is that when it comes to the development team, as soon as we find talented people in any function within that broader team, we want to bring them on board. Whenever we feel that the entire team is ready to increase the cadence, we will do so.
We always strive to do that. The absolute most important thing here is not to set a date.
It's to make sure that we can maintain or increase quality before increasing quantity.
Hjalmar Ahlberg
Okay. Thank you.
Also on the personnel cost, you saw that you have continued to increase the number of employees. Just trying to understand quarter-on-quarter, I think the cost were largely stable.
Is it kind of a lag effect that you should see more cost increase in Q2 quarter-over-quarter? If you could add some info on that would be helpful.
Mikael Rahm
In terms of personnel costs?
Hjalmar Ahlberg
Exactly.
Mikael Rahm
I think that Q4 we had annual bonuses as well. I don't know if you're comparing that.
Obviously personnel cost will grow as we increase our personnel, almost linearly.
Hjalmar Ahlberg
Good. You got the question about regulatory challenges in Europe.
Maybe also interesting to see if you see any changing that's like sweepstakes. It's still the same kind of trends there, anything that could be worth mentioning?
Christoffer Källberg
You're spot-on. It's the same trends.
What we've said from the outset that we do expect over time that there will be states who change their view on sweepstakes. Our policy is intact, when states change their view, we adjust accordingly.
No surprises there.
Hjalmar Ahlberg
All right. On commercial deals, you continue to keep a very high pace here, and you mentioned that you have a small share in the term of global market.
Can you keep this pace in the coming quarters, and can you maybe increase it if you could add some flavor on that would be interesting.
Christoffer Källberg
It's very hard to predict the number of deals for any given period of time. If we look back on this quarter and the past quarter, we have achieved more new deals than we would have expected.
I think that is very strong evidence of the thesis that we've had for a long period of time, which is that we have a good platform, we have good content, we have the right relationships, and we have a strong sales team that can execute. The outcome of that is that we continue to strike a lot of new deals, both with existing clients in existing or new jurisdictions or with existing and new brands, or that we identify new clients that we believe in and that we bring on.
I remain positive on our ability to close new deals also in the coming quarters as I did before. I can't quantify the number of deals or the impact of those deals in the short to medium term.
Hjalmar Ahlberg
Got it. Then just a final question on Hacksaw Ventures here.
Do you think, as you say, you can help your OpenRGS partners here to grow further, do you see also that this is something that you can kind of accelerate the pace where you add the number of studios on your platform?
Christoffer Källberg
Potentially. I think those are two different things.
If we're talking about OpenRGS specifically, we have historically added approximately one studio per quarter. That's the pace we've been operating at.
Can we increase that over time? Possibly, yeah.
I think the important thing when it comes to onboarding studios is that we don't strive for quantity, we strive for quality. We would rather onboard fewer studios that we believe more in than a higher number of studios that we're not so sure about.
We want to be very cautious and ensure that we find people that we like to work with who are very good at what they do and who produce content that, first of all, we believe is great content, and second of all, that we believe is complementary to our existing portfolio. For now, one studio per quarter is as good a guess as we can have at this point.
When it comes to Ventures, remember the key thing for us when it comes to Ventures is that if we feel that with our position—with position I talk about our distribution, our industry knowledge, our experience—if we feel that with that position we can use some of the capital we have, which for us is, relatively speaking, small amounts, and we can invest that in entrepreneurs that we believe in in order for them to accelerate their growth with us, that's a great proposition for both parties because we find a partner and we help them grow, and when we find that, we're definitely going to look at that. That, I think, could be, again, whenever we find opportunities.
We don't have a sort of specific number of deals that we would expect to do in any specific period of time. We will be opportunistic.
When we find entrepreneurs that we believe in and when we think we can make a difference, we will look into that.
Hjalmar Ahlberg
All right. Thank you very much.
Christoffer Källberg
Thank you.
Hjalmar Ahlberg
Thank you.
Operator
As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Jack Cummings from Berenberg.
Please go ahead.
Jack Cummings
Good morning, Chris. Good morning, Mike.
Christoffer Källberg
Good morning. Morning.
Jack Cummings
My first question was just, you mentioned earlier and also you flagged last year that in Q2, in April and May, there was a little bit of softness because of macro volatility. Clearly, it doesn't look like you've seen much volatility in Q1, but it'd be great to just get a sense of whether you saw any kind of impact or changes to consumer demand either in March or at the beginning of Q2.
Christoffer Källberg
No. We don't have data to support that it would be a big difference following the developments we've seen globally over the last call it 8 weeks.
No.
Jack Cummings
Perfect. Thank you.
My second question, in the release there was no mention of kind of full year 2026 guidance, I just wanted to check if you are comfortable with where consensus sits for the full year, which I think is about 30% revenue growth and just under 80% EBIT margins.
Christoffer Källberg
Yeah. As we don't give guidance for individual years, but what we have said is that over time, our aim is to grow above 30%, which is higher than the market, and that goes back to some of the reasons that I outlined earlier in this call.
We maintain that view. We haven't changed anything from that.
Yeah. That's pretty much where we stand.
Jack Cummings
Perfect. Then to my final question on OpenRGS, you've now obviously got 10 studios developing games on the platform.
You mentioned the release cadence can be lumpy, but it'd be good to just get a sense of was Q1, in your view, a faster cadence of releases for OpenRGS, or is 15 kind of a baseline that we should anticipate from OpenRGS? Thank you.
Christoffer Källberg
No, it's a baseline for now. Then I would go back to what I mentioned before, right?
On the one hand, we do continue to onboard studios. As a result of that, you would expect that, as we have more studios, clearly, the release cadence would increase.
Then thereafter, we would also have the studios that we have on the platform would increase their release schedule over time. We would expect it to increase over time.
Jack Cummings
Great. Thanks very much.
Christoffer Källberg
Good. We have a number of questions in the activity feed.
If you give me a second, we're just going to go through these very quickly and see what we have. Covered that.
We have somebody asking about the growth per geographical region. As we don't talk about that on a quarterly basis, but if you look at the full-year numbers that we talked about in the full-year earnings, you saw that we grew across all regions during the last year.
As I mentioned in my opening remarks today, we grow in all regions now as well. I think OpenRGS we've covered.
Question around stock buybacks, we've not issued a statement on any stock buybacks at this point in time, there's no news around that. You would have seen from the press release following the AGM yesterday that the board has a mandate to, in the future, potentially issue stock buybacks should they want to, but no decision has been taken at this point in time.
Ventures, I think we've covered.
Mikael Rahm
Yep. Then
Christoffer Källberg
I think we've covered most of those written questions. Yeah.
Good. Super.
With that, I think I would like to thank everyone for dialing in, analysts and investors alike. Always a pleasure hearing your questions.
We're now going to get back to our Q2, and we'll speak to you in a few months again, if not before. Thank you very much, and back to you, operator.
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