Jumbo Interactive Limited

Jumbo Interactive Limited

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Q4 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptAugust 27, 2026

Operator

I would now like to hand the conference over to Mike Veverka, Managing Director, CEO, and Founder. Please go ahead.

Good

Mike Veverka

morning, everyone, and welcome to the Jumbo's FY26 results presentation. Let me begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet and pay our respects to all elders past and present.

Today, I'm joined by our Chief Operating Officer, Brad Board, who will provide an update on the integration of our recent acquisitions; and our CFO, Jatin Khosla, who will take you through the financials. I'll begin with the FY26 overview.

I'm pleased to report a record group EBITDA of $76.5 million, which equates to $85.2 million on an underlying basis. This was driven by two successful acquisitions, a constantly compounding SaaS business, and a resilient performance in Australia despite jackpot headwinds.

The Dream US business was a standout, contributing $7.7 million over eight months, well ahead of our expectations. This was on their old software platform without an app.

This business is now live on the Jumbo Lottery Platform with a new app and is well-placed for the year ahead. Australia's largest charity lottery, the RSL, is also live on the Jumbo Lottery Platform at dreamhomeartunion.com.au, and the launch has been positive.

The Dream UK business delivered 23% annualized EBITDA growth, and we have plans to move them over to the Jumbo Lottery Platform in the future. This will prepare them well to navigate the expected industry regulation, which is a positive sign for industry maturity.

Managed Services contributed $8.4 million in EBITDA, with the UK in line with expectations and Canada exceeding them. A 27-cent full-year dividend has been declared at the top end of our target range, and the buyback continues on a disciplined basis.

Moving to the key financial metrics, we've had double-digit growth largely driven by the Dream acquisitions. Group TTV and revenue were up 13% and 33%, while underlying EBITDA and NPATA both increased by 25% and 20%, respectively.

Free cash flow was up 12%, and cash conversion remains healthy at over 100%. Turning to our FY26 report card, we've met or exceeded four out of five guidance metrics.

Dream UK had 23% percent annualized underlying EBITDA growth, but didn't quite get to the lofty £8 million target we set ourselves, but it was a good result nonetheless. Turning to Lottery Retailing, where market share performance reflects a genuinely subdued jackpot year.

FY26 saw just 23 large Division 1 jackpots for Powerball and Oz Lotto, down from 31 in FY25. The average jackpot fell from $49 million to $42 million, the peak was $80 million against $100 million last year, and the aggregate prize pool came in at $1 billion, down a third on FY25's $1.5 billion.

Notably, Oz Lotto didn't get to $50 million for the first time in nine year- nine years, and it's the first time in five years that Powerball didn't reach $100 million. It's a marked change from the record $200 million Powerball we saw in FY24.

Against that backdrop, our share of sales reflects subdued conditions rather than any shift in our competitive position. As always, jackpot cycles naturally fluctuate, the long-term fundamentals of the business remain unchanged, and we're well placed to capitalize when jackpots return to more normal levels.

Looking at our key Lottery Retailing metrics, the story is fewer, but more valuable players. Digital penetration grew to 46.6%, continuing the structural shift to digital.

There were 144,000 new players and 736,000 active players, reflecting both the lean jackpot year and the reset of FY24's record $200 million Powerball. Pleasingly, average spend per active player rose to $570, and average revenue per active player increased to $141, both up meaningfully on FY25.

Standing back for a moment, it's good to see Jumbo's other businesses step in and support overall growth during this historically low jackpot period. Software-as-a-Service, TTV grew 15% to $289 million, and active players rose just under 10% to $1.9 million no, 1.9 million.

As I mentioned earlier, we signed RSL Queensland, Australia's largest charity lottery program, and it went live on the 15th of August. This will add an incremental $200 million in TTV per year and lifting our pro forma charity market share from 24% to 54%.

We also went live with Dream US on the 24th of August, unlocking a mobile app for the business along with enhancing the data and marketing capabilities. On Brightstar, commercial terms for the player account management component weren't agreed, reflecting our commercial discipline.

The digital component remains in negotiation, subject to board approval. Though, we don't expect any outcome to be material to group EBITDA.

On to Managed Services, where strong execution is translating into real operating leverage. In the UK, we exceeded £100 million in TTV for the first time, and grew underlying EBITDA 10%, with disciplined cost management offsetting a record year of prize payouts.

In Canada, Stride delivered a standout 46% increase in underlying EBITDA, driven by new business wins, product investment, and favorable campaign timing, as we continue to build out its integrated operating model. Both businesses are well positioned to deliver profitable growth and operating leverage.

Our international businesses, which include the Dream businesses, are where we're seeing the greatest potential for growth. They contributed $30 million of our $85 million underlying EBITDA this year, and we expect that to grow to $36 million to $40 million in FY27.

I'll now hand over to Brad, who'll take you through how the Dream integration is progressing.

Brad Board

Thanks, Mike. The Dream businesses, now firmly within the Jumbo family, are demonstrating the value of expanding our B2C footprint.

Our access to a combined population of approximately 450 million people is particularly powerful at a time when Australian jackpots have been so quiet. That quieter pace has enabled us to deploy optimal attention at getting the foundations right in integration and broader group operational process, ensuring the sum of parts performs to the maximum effect.

Integration remains on track, with significant progress made in the value enablement phase. Throughout this period, trading has remained strong, with all three B2C businesses plugged into Jumbo's core insights and business performance rhythms.

This allows not only a centralized ability to understand and challenge each business, but also share insights learned in each across the portfolio for use in their own respective markets. Dream US increasing their draw cadence, and Dream UK optimizing their prize portfolio mix proportional to customer value trends, are two such examples amongst many which are validating our strategic rationale for acquiring both businesses.

Our confidence in that original strategic rationale has been bolstered in what the team has been able to achieve over and above maintaining healthy trading momentum. This includes in the US, where we've transitioned the team to the Jumbo Lottery Platform and onboarded a highly experienced VP of Growth and Marketing.

JLP's advanced data capabilities, native mobile app, and additional payment methods, such as Apple Pay and PayPal, enables the next exciting period of growth for the Dream US business. In the UK, we've recently hired a new managing director who is overseeing the remaining earnout period, and ensuring continuity is appropriately balanced with Jumbo-specific growth initiatives, such as planning for an eventual migration to the Jumbo Lottery Platform.

Key enablers for Jumbo's scale are falling into place, and the upside of these businesses remains beyond our initial expectations. With that, I'll hand over to Jatin to take you through the financials.

Jatin Khosla

Thanks, Brad, and good morning, everyone. Starting with the usual underlying EBITDA waterfall, excluding the impact of the Dream businesses, group underlying EBITDA was $63.4 million, down 7.2% on the PCP.

This was a resilient outcome against a much tougher jackpot environment, with no $100 million jackpots in FY26 compared to four in the PCP. The Dream businesses added a further $21.8 million, with Dream UK contributing 8.5 months and Dream US eight months, taking group underlying EBITDA to a record $85.2 million.

One-off items of $8.7 million mainly reflect M&A costs on the Dream businesses and a non-cash acquisition accounting adjustment for Dream US. Turning to the cost base, excluding the Dream businesses, underlying OpEx increased 8.7%, reflecting deliberate investment in two key areas.

First, marketing within Lottery Retailing, where we increased spend to reactivate players and help maintain market share in a subdued jackpot environment. Total marketing spend, including promotions, was at the lower end of our 3% to 4% of Lottery Retailing TTV range, reflecting continued discipline in how that investment is deployed.

Second, investment in our people. The main driver was increased headcount, brought on to deliver new client work, wage inflation, and a higher bonus accrual, reflecting the strong profit growth we've achieved this year.

Other costs declined 3.6%, reflecting continued discipline across the broader cost base. Turning to the Australian P&L, which reflects the combined performance of Lottery Retailing, SaaS, and corporate.

Overall Australia TTV was flat on the PCP, with strong growth in charity sales offsetting a decline in Lottery Retailing and Lotterywest TTV, both impacted by the absence of large jackpots. Pleasingly, the Lottery Retailing revenue margin increased to 24.7%, reflecting favorable product mix.

OpEx was up 11.7%, reflecting the investment in marketing and people I spoke about earlier. In aggregate, the underlying EBITDA margin of 47.7% remained within our 46% to 50% guidance range.

Given the historically low jackpot outcomes, this is a result that speaks to the resilience of the core business. Moving on to Managed Services, which in aggregate delivered a record underlying EBITDA of $8.4 million, up 18.1% on the PCP.

In the UK, revenue grew 5.4% and EBITDA rose 9.1%, despite abnormally high prize payouts and unfavorable FX translation effects. FY26 saw 21 jackpot prize payouts against a five-year average of around 14.

In Canada, revenue increased 8.7% and underlying EBITDA rose 41%, reflecting the benefits from the previous year's investment, the team's focus on higher-value aspects of the lottery value chain, as well as favorable campaign timing. Turning now to the Dream giveaway segment, where we've split out the performance of Dream UK and Dream US.

Dream UK contributed $35.1 million in revenue and $14.1 million in EBITDA over the 8.5 months since completion, at an underlying EBITDA margin of 40.1%. Turning to Dream US, where we've adjusted revenue and EBITDA to reflect the underlying performance of the business, removing a one-off non-cash fair value adjustment required under AASB 3.

On this basis, Dream US contributed $18.5 million in underlying revenue and $7.7 million in underlying EBITDA over the eight months since completion, at an underlying EBITDA margin of 41.9%. To give you a sense of how each business performed, the right-hand side of the slide compares FY26 underlying EBITDA to the comparative figures we disclosed at the time of each acquisition.

Dream UK's performance reflected 23% annualized growth on the comparative period, driven by continued market growth, partly offset by higher spend from new market testing initiatives. Dream US's FY26 underlying EBITDA contribution of $5.3 million US was the highest on record, with the eight-month contribution exceeding the comparative 12-month period.

This was due to changes in both the number and timing of draws. FY26 saw 29 draws compared to the comparative period, which had only 16.

All the draws in the comparative period were longer-duration, 11-month draws, while FY26 saw a hybrid of longer and shorter-duration draws ranging from one to 11 months. As revenue is recognized at the end of each draw, the FY26 result benefited from a transitional overlap of legacy long-duration and new short-duration draws, an overlap that won't be repeated at the same scale in FY27.

With Dream US now on the JLP platform, it will incur a service fee of approximately $0.8 million to $1 million US or circa 3.2% of ticket sales. Similar to what is in place between Lottery Retailing and SaaS, this is an internal transfer pricing allocation between segments, which will get eliminated on consolidation.

While there is no net impact at the group level, SaaS and therefore Australia EBITDA will be higher, and conversely, Dream US EBITDA will be lower. This impact has been factored into our FY27 guidance, which Mike will cover later.

Moving to capital management, the balance sheet remains strong, following the deployment of $130 million of net cash on the Dream acquisitions. Liquidity is also strong, with $77.4 million made up of $36 million in available cash and $41.4 million of undrawn debt capacity.

The board has declared a fully franked final dividend of 15 cents per share, taking the total dividend for FY26 to 27 cents per share. This represents a payout ratio of 49.5% of statutory NPAT, at the top end of our targeted 30% to 50% range.

Since completion of the acquisitions roughly eight months ago, we've reduced debt by $34 million. Net leverage remains conservative at 0.5 times EBITDA, and the on-market share buyback will continue in a disciplined and opportunistic manner.

Turning now to the cash flow waterfall, where the strength of our cash generative model is clear. Free cash flow of $47 million was up 12% on the PCP, with cash conversion of well over 100%.

On the right-hand side of the chart, you can see the pro forma impact of the final dividend alongside the liquidity available from our debt facility, taking pro forma available funds to $68 million. Stepping back, FY26 has been a transformative year for Jumbo.

The Australian business remained resilient and delivered within our margin guidance, amid a historically low jackpot period. Managed Services delivered strong earnings growth and operating leverage, and the Dream businesses made a meaningful contribution, while providing us with a significant growth platform.

Finally, the balance sheet remains strong, with our capital management approach both prudent and balanced, focused on maintaining financial strength, reducing leverage, and supporting shareholder returns, all while continuing to fund growth. I'll now hand back to Mike.

Mike Veverka

Thanks, Jatin. This clearly shows just how important it was that we acquired the Dream businesses and continued to grow SaaS and Managed Services to help the group through lean jackpot periods.

Powerball and Oz Lotto are of course the foundation of the Australian lottery industry. I welcome the recent gambling reforms, and look forward to those games returning to their full potential.

Let me quickly take you through our strategy in a bit more detail. We have a clear plan, built on four pillars.

Protecting and growing Oz Lotteries, building on the value we create in the lottery ecosystem; secondly, transforming and scaling the Dream acquisitions; thirdly, continuing to optimize our software and managed services businesses; and finally, accelerate our growth through M&A. With each acquisition, our team gets better at integration, which bodes well for the future.

All of this is underpinned by our people, technology, and governance. We've been very active with AI over the past 12 months.

Our software development has been greatly enhanced. We've been able to gain deeper insights from our player data.

We've improved fraud detection and compliance monitoring. A video has been created demonstrating these advances, and I urge you all to take a look at it at jumbointeractive.ai.

As always, you can use our AI chatbot to explore the annual report. This year, for the first time, it's voice enabled, you can simply talk to it in natural language, I hope you find that useful.

Turning to our FY27 group outlook. For Australia, we're guiding to an unchanged underlying EBITDA margin of 46% to 50%, with the key assumptions driving the business relatively unchanged.

For the international businesses, we are guiding to an underlying EBITDA of $36 million to $40 million, which reflects the combined Managed Services and Dream segments. On capital management, we're maintaining our dividend payout range, and continuing the share buyback.

Finally, I'd like to highlight just how far Jumbo has come. Back in FY18, we were a single brand business generating $19 million of EBITDA.

By FY25, we've built out a genuine software platform business, and EBITDA has grown to more than threefold to $68 million. Now, with Dream acquisitions added to the portfolio, EBITDA has grown again to $85 million, with a meaningfully larger share of that now coming from international markets.

We're a genuinely different business today than we were even a couple of years ago, and I'm proud of the team that got us there. With that, that concludes the presentation, and we'll now open for questions.

Operator

Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question.

Your first question today comes from David Fabris with Macquarie. Please go ahead.

David Fabris

Oh, hi, Mike. Hi, Jatin.

I just wanted to start off with the prize draw businesses. I'm trying to understand the guidance a little more.

Can you maybe just talk about how you're thinking about the TTV growth for each of those businesses on a pro forma basis, and then maybe set some framework around the margins? Then to that point, can you maybe talk about how margins should trend in the coming years versus those that have been currently reported?

Jatin Khosla

David, it's Jatin. A few questions there, let me just talk about the guidance for '27.

I'll start with the Dream US business. We are expecting strong TTV growth in that business going forward.

We've obviously given you the EBITDA numbers. The margin benefited in FY26.

We got some good, gains, I guess, on marketing, which is a bit lower than expected. I do expect that margin to come down slightly because of the benefit that we took in FY26.

With them on the platform, we look to get some marketing benefits, but we're also looking at new channels for us on on the marketing side. I do expect that margin to come down slightly.

On Dream US, sorry, on Dream UK, we do expect the margin to improve given a a shift in the product mix. In FY26, we spent, a bit more on marketing.

We We've spoken about those market testing initiatives. That resulted in marketing spend as a percentage of TTV being slightly higher than we did at the first half or in the comparative period.

I do expect the EBITDA margin to improve in the Dream UK business. Does Does that answer your question, David?

David Fabris

We can back-solve what sort of that implies for TTV growth once we sort of work through it. That's fine.

I guess just in the future years, is kind of '27 going to be the setup for where we should think about margins, or can you maybe talk about where margins trend in across the businesses?

Jatin Khosla

Our sense is, in '27, we are making a bit of investment in both businesses, as Brad talked to. We've brought some new personnel in, we'll be moving to the platform.

I talked about the US incurring a platform fee for moving onto JLP. We really do see [cough] '27 as being the period where we make the investment, and then it's all about scale.

I might get Brad to make a couple of comments about the future outlook, but from a financial perspective, we can get the foundations right in '27. I would be expecting some operating leverage going forward.

Brad Board

Thanks, Jatin. As Jatin said, those foundational improvements that we're making in terms of just the day-to-day marketing approach with the teams, they've got guardrails that they work within, which is a new approach, more formalized, that they haven't done in the past.

We're establishing that, balancing with the different marketing explorations. We've got a really healthy balance of discipline to protect margin, but also explore where we need to sort of untapped the areas that we've sort of identified from the get-go.

David Fabris

Appreciate that. Look, just jumping onto the Australian businesses, I was pretty surprised at the margin you delivered in the FY26 result despite the poor jackpot activity.

I get that marketing's a bit of a lever as part of that. Were there any one-off cost savings or anything that could impact FY27 that wasn't in '26 that we should be aware of?

Jatin Khosla

No, not really, David. I think marketing is obviously a semi-variable cost.

We're at the lower end of our three to four percentage point range. This year, we actually had a significant cost from STI bonuses, which we haven't seen in previous years.

Outside of those two semi-variable costs, and personnel, which is a big part, no one-offs in there that will come through in '27.

David Fabris

That's helpful. Just one last question for me, just the Lottery Retailing market share.

I can see the chart on slide six, which is helpful. It's been falling since '24, and I know there was that misstep with marketing, which you've rectified.

Jackpot activity hasn't been great. Can you maybe help us understand how you think about market share if jackpot activity normalizes, cuz I know that Lotterycorp are talking about a significant benefit through normalization.

Maybe some guardrails around market share, or do we extrapolate the second half '26 market share to be conservative?

Mike Veverka

Historically, David, we've always overperformed with the high jackpots, just because of the way we operate. We suffer at the low jackpots and do really well at the high jackpots.

We're more than anyone are looking forward to a return, and we should see that flow through in all the numbers, including market share, and things like that. Of course, that just depends on when they finally do come back.

I think we've done everything we can to at least get ourselves in the right position.

Brad Board

We've got a lot of data on this, and there's a long tail, when market share generally flows. We've had a very long protracted period of low activity.

Moving forward, we think that the worst of what we had to experience, we've sort of gotten through, and we're maintaining cost discipline around marketing, to sort of not overinvest, where we don't think it's feasible in the environment.

David Fabris

Okay. That's helpful.

Thank you very much.

Operator

Your next question comes from Rohan Sundram with MST Financial. Please go ahead.

Rohan Sundram

Hi, Mike and Jatin. A couple for me.

Firstly, on the marketing spend, with the change in strategy. It's been a very lean market, but how would you so far describe the effectiveness of your strategies around that in reactivating the inactive players?

Just mindful that there's lags in place, just wondering how you're seeing it at the moment. Thanks.

Brad Board

Thanks for that. We've got a range of data points that we monitor.

One of them is expected activation rate, and that takes in a range of factors, but specifically, on a trailing 12-month basis at any point, we have an expectation of where things should be, and if there's regression in or out, that's a signal to us. Essentially, we're within the healthy range of expectation, and at different times, punching above our weight, in terms of the activity that's been happening.

Rohan Sundram

Thank you, Brad.

Operator

Your next question comes from Charles Strong with Jarden. Please go ahead.

Charles Strong

Morning, Mike. Morning, Jatin.

Just wondering on the UK Dream business, how you're seeing that competitive environment there? Any commentary back sort of relative to when you did the acquisition last year?

Mike Veverka

I suppose the competitive environment hasn't changed too much. There has been a bit of consolidation, that's been well covered in the press, with a number of small operators being bought out by larger players, us included.

That'll be interesting. In terms of cost to acquire new customers, etc., we're still seeing very healthy numbers in that area.

It's going through an interesting period. It'll be positive in the long run, obviously, with regulation.

A good sign for the industry. We'll just work through it.

It's something that we've highlighted even from the beginning when we bought the business that we expect this to happen at some point. We're going through that at the moment, and I think there'll be plenty of opportunities to come out of it in the future.

Charles Strong

Right, thanks, Mike. Then maybe just on the Lottery Retailing business, interesting to see the spend per player going higher there.

In your mind, what do you sort of put that down to?

Mike Veverka

It's a clear indicator that the consumer environment is still pretty strong as far as lotteries are concerned. We're not seeing anything in the data that points to any weakening in this consumer environment, which the increased spend is a clear indication of that.

The consumer's fine. It's only the jackpots.

It really just all roads point to the jackpots. That's a good thing, because that's not something we can control.

The things we can control, we are controlling, and we've got optimized. When the jackpots do return, hence we're pretty confident we can deliver when they do return.

Thanks.

Charles Strong

Appreciate that.

Operator

The next question comes from Sam Bradshaw with Evans & Partners. Please go ahead.

Sam Bradshaw

Hey. Good morning, Mike, Jatin, and Brad.

Just wondering what your appetite is for further M&A beyond here.

Mike Veverka

Thanks. With these two businesses going really well, we have a healthy appetite for more.

It's obviously going to come down to timing and availability of opportunities. We're not rushing out to buy something immediately.

We do have an active business development part of our business that is running the ruler over many businesses, because these things take a long time to come together. Above all else, we have to make sure that these two businesses continue to do well, and we don't rush into it too much and bite off more than we can chew.

I think we're getting the cadence right on that. Brad's delivering on the integration, the results are starting to flow through, and now we just wait for other opportunities to appear.

With a couple of good businesses under our belt, it should set us up for buying a couple more over the next say, couple of years or so.

Sam Bradshaw

Great. Thanks, Mike.

Operator

Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. We'll pause a short moment for any final questions to register.

There are no further questions at this time. That does conclude our conference for today.

Thank you for participating.