XLMedia Plc has stated confidence in achieving its full-year 2022 commercial expectations, driven by significant US growth and the continued benefits of its streamlined publishing network.
Providing a trading update ahead of interim results, XLMedia expects to announce group revenues of $44.5m, up 37% on H1 2021 results of $32m.
Headline growth sees the London Aim-listed igaming media publisher anticipate generating H1 adjusted EBITDA results of approximately US$10.5m (H1 2021: US$6.6 m).
“The Company has traded well across the first six months of the current financial year, buoyed by its newest vertical, US Sports, which produced a strong performance in the period and accounted for 68% of the Group’s revenue, US$30.2 million.” – read XLMedia’s trading update.
H1 trading saw the publisher’s Sports vertical double its revenues to $34m (H12021: $11.7m) – capitalising on the performance of newly acquired US assets Sports Betting Dime and Saturday Football INC, matching performance with a congested US sports calendar.
US sports growth dwarfed XLMedia’s European sports vertical, which reported period revenues of $3.8m.
Period trading saw the group’s casino vertical generate $8.4m (H12020: 12.5m) – results in-line with corporate expectations as XLMedia continues to reduce the size of its network portfolio from 3,000 domains to circa 45 ‘upgraded/optimised’ websites.
XLMedia’s current cash balance stands at $17.7m (H12021: $37m) as “future acquisition payments and earnout elements of the consideration largely funded from the Group’s free cashflow.”
Shareholders were further notified that XLMedia “expects to make deferred consideration payments of approximately US$7.7m in H2 2022.”
H1 trading saw the firm announce the new leadership team of Chief Executive David King and Caroline Ackroyd as CFO – the duo who will announce H1 2022 trading results on 26 September.