Catena Media suffered a revenue dip for the third quarter, with North America continuing to be the most prevalent source of profit for the group.
Overall, revenue for the group decreased by 33% to €10.7m, whilst revenue from North America dropped by 29% to €19.5m.
As well as this, there was also a slight dip in new depositing customers (NDCs) from continuing operations which totalled 27,342 (40,104), a decrease of 32 percent.
Manuel Stan commented on the firm’s performance: “From a top-line perspective, Q3 was a challenging quarter in which we saw revenue decline by 33%, driven by continued underperformance in online sports betting. Lower revenue also reflected the ending of certain media partnerships and changes made to other partner agreements.
“The flipside was that these cost-side measures lifted the adjusted EBITDA margin from 1%in July to 18% in September and double adjusted EBITDA quarter-over-quarter. Alongside this bottom-line improvement, we also saw a like-for-like increase in North American Casino revenue and incremental gains in our key organic search rankings, despite higher-than-usual volatility due to Google’s core updates.”
Ahead of the update, Catena had taken efforts to “streamline and rightsize” the content and marketing teams, announcing 29 layoffs.
The firm looked to modify its remaining US media network, taking the “strategic decision to focus product development efforts on a cluster of core brands.”
Stan added: “In late October we completed the process of finalising our organisational structure, implementing a flatter content production function that creates a foundation for future growth led by a leaner, product-oriented organisation with clear accountability at all levels.
“The streamlining of the content production and content marketing teams involved the difficult decision to part ways with 29 employees. This rightsizing will create closer alignment with our product goals and will generate an annual cost saving of around €2.2m, starting in November.
“We also completed our new executive management team with the recruitment of Liv Biesemans as Chief Legal & Compliance Officer. When Liv joins us on 1 January, all five members of the executive management team will be new in their roles.
“With the right teams and strategic priorities in place and a clear focus on our core products, we now have a strong base to tackle our next challenge: delivering profitable growth.”
Stan also went on to provide a positive outlook for the firm’s North American casino operations as he revealed that the drop in revenue from €8.6m to €7.6m was ‘primarily a reflection of casino revenue related to prior quarters.
He continued by stating that ‘excluding this, casino revenue rose slightly during the period, maintaining the year-over-year trend observed in Q2’.
“A highlight for the quarter was the evolution of Bonus.com, one of our top-performing casino products, into a global asset. The Spanish-language version launched in North America in Q2, started to rank well, and we launched it in Mexico at the end of Q3. In November, we also launched the brand in Brazil. These rollouts illustrate our strategy to maximise the organic growth potential of our most authoritative brands in existing and new markets.
“We made further progress incorporating social sweepstakes casinos into most of our casino offerings. Social sweepstakes casino continues to form part of our long-term casino strategy, capitalising on the immediate revenue opportunity while also building our brands and databases in preparation for future regulation, especially as online casino gaming is yet to regulate in the majority of US states.”
Everi Holdings‘ stockholders have voted to approve the pending simultaneous acquisition of Everi and IGT’s Gaming & Digital business by a newly formed holding company owned by funds managed by affiliates of Apollo Global Management.
Apollo Global’s deal for Everi and IGT’s Gaming & Digital business has been in place since July earlier this year, with it covering a previous merger agreement in place between Everi and IGT.
At a recent stockholders’ special meeting, the casino gaming content and products provider noted that “approximately 99.88% of the shares voted were voted in favour of the merger, which represented approximately 71.48% of the total outstanding shares of Everi common stock as of October 3, 2024, the record date for the Special Meeting”.
Everi stated that per the terms of the merger agreement, stockholders will “receive $14.25 per share in cash for every share of Everi common stock they own immediately prior to the effective time of the merger”.
“We are pleased that our stockholders supported our transaction with the Apollo Funds,” commented Michael Rumbolz, Chair of Everi’s Board of Directors.
“We now shift our focus to the important next steps toward completing the transaction and maximising value for Everi stockholders.”
In line with what IGT said earlier this week alongside its third-quarter financials, Everi said that the proposed transaction is expected to close by the end of Q3 2025, assuming a timely satisfaction of necessary closing conditions.
At the time of Apollo’s initial acquisition announcement in July, Daniel Cohen, Partner at Apollo, stated: “We are excited to reach this agreement with IGT and Everi, which establishes a leading, diversified solutions provider that is well positioned across the entire gaming ecosystem. As an active investor in the gaming and leisure sector for many years, we have long admired both companies and their highly talented teams.
“We strongly believe in the value proposition of the combination and are confident these complementary gaming platforms will be even better positioned under private ownership to capture the opportunities ahead to grow and create value. We look forward to working in partnership with all the people at IGT Gaming and Everi to propel the combined enterprise forward.”
