Zeal Network Aktie

Welcome to the earnings call of ZEAL Network SE regarding the Q1 figures of 2026. The company's CEO Dr. Stefan Tweraser and CFO Andrea Behrendt will guide you through the figures in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line. Please make sure we can see your full names, ladies and gentlemen.

And with that, I'm handing over to you, Andrea.

Thanks a lot, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to our earnings call for Q1. I'm happy that you're joining us today. With me is Stefan, and we will present the Q1 results. I hope you see the presentation. If not, you can find it on our website in the IR section.

So the agenda for today, we will begin with a brief update on our highlights for Q1, then dive into the financial details and have a look how we delivered against our strategic focus so far. And at the end, we will give the time to you and open up for questions. And with that, handing over to Stefan for summary of Q1.

Andrea, thank you very much, and also a warm welcome from my side to everyone on the call. As you know, our business is very much driven, especially on the top line, very much driven by the jackpot situation in Germany. And although we haven't seen a jackpot in Germany, neither in Lotto 6/49 nor in EuroJackpot for more than 7 months now, we are still on a very strong growth trajectory.

Revenue and customer acquisitions have increased in the first quarter of 2026. Our gross margin has improved once again, but EBITDA was a little bit lower than expected because of the focus on investments in marketing and other initiatives that we've taken to ensure our sustainable future growth.

Speaking of growth, we are very proud that we have launched our third charity lottery, Traumautoverlosung, in April. Thus, we have strengthened our foundation for long-term growth while continuing to invest in the diversification of our business model. I'll hand back to Andrea for more details.

Thanks. And now let's get into the details of the first quarter financials. As always, I will begin with the jackpot environment because that's crucial for us and it drives customer acquisition as well as reactivating our existing customers. As you most likely know, the first quarter of this year was a very weak jackpot environment. We had no peak jackpots, and it was even worse than last year because the averages, especially in EuroJackpot, was below last year.

And if you compare to last year, you see that we had EUR 112 million EuroJackpot in Q1. And this year, we had nothing relevant. So that's the jackpot environment. Fingers crossed that the jackpot builds up now in May. We are hoping for both products to reach peak in May and drive Q1 top line growth. But despite this, we delivered a good performance in the first quarter.

And on Slide #7, you will now see how this reflects in our financials. Here, I want to highlight 3 numbers to you and starting with the revenue. So we had a revenue growth of 6%, like I said, in a very weak jackpot environment, and this is driven by a slight increase on the top line on the billings, but combined with higher growth and higher number of monthly active users. So that's a good result for that environment that we have been in.

Additionally, we have been able to increase our marketing activities by 13%, always within our boundary conditions, and we acquired a significant number of new customers. Again, a good achievement for this weak jackpot environment. And I want to really highlight here that this marketing investment and also the expansion in our personnel are targeted to our growth ambition and initiatives that will drive future growth in the coming years and also the long-term value for our shareholders. On the bottom line, we generated EBITDA of EUR 15 million. And like I said, the investments into diversification of our offering, of course, reflect in this EBITDA.

So let's look closer to the lottery billings. A good number, especially in this given challenging environment. But how did that come up? We increased our monthly active users by 5%. And on the other hand, these customers spent EUR 57 in average. Both numbers actually as expected in this environment, even with some growth on the monthly active users.

The second driver of our ZEAL growth is the customer acquisition. And here, we acquired 270,000 new customers in the first quarter. And this is a clear sign that our diversification strategy works because we were able to acquire 11% more new registered customers compared to last year, and that's the success. We spent for these customers EUR 53.8. In the brokerage core business, it was actually just EUR 46.

With that, looking into games, our other product category. Here, we generated still quite some momentum. We expanded our portfolio to over 740 games, and we improved further on with additional product features. And this results in an increase of MAU of 34% and decreased overall average revenues per user, what is driven by the overall increase on MAUs.

And with that, handing over to Stefan for an update on Traumhausverlosung and the new kid on the block, Traumautoverlosung.

Yes. Before we talk about cars, let's talk about houses. We are very proud that we have now the eighth Traumhausverlosung raffle running. The 2026 performance of the 2 houses that we raffled off on Mallorca and Fohr has been very, very promising. The Mallorca House, in particular, has achieved double-digit numbers in billings, EUR 10.5 million to be exact and showed the very best retention performance of all houses so far, indicating how stable that business growth is already. The current house that we're raffling off is located in the south of Germany near Lake Chiemsee.

If we move on from houses to cars, we are super happy to have launched a new social lottery in Germany. We did that in April. It's our third social lottery after freiheit+ and Traumhausverlosung so the focus now is on cars. We will have a very exciting lineup on cars. The first season is focused on a very rare Porsche 911 GT3 RS. In that particular configuration, only 5 cars are available worldwide, and it's actually one of the most followed cars on Instagram. What's new with this raffle is that we are limiting the number of tickets, each ticket costs EUR 10. Please understand that it's early days, and we are unable to provide any further information regarding ticket sales or billings at this stage, but we're super happy with the launch and very proud that we now have a third social lottery in Germany that is attractive for a very new and additional segment of customers.

And with this, I'll hand over to Andrea again to take the progress on our strategic priorities.

The strategic priorities we shared with you in the March earnings call, and we want to give you an update how we delivered against it already in Q1. So let's look at it quickly. First of all, on the strengthening of the Lotto24 core business, we achieved a gross margin of 17.8%. And as already communicated, we acquired 274k new registered customers in a weak jackpot environment, so really a success. Additionally, we are further pushing on diversification and added Traumhausverlosung to our offering. The second part is Traumhausverlosung and here, the 2 draws for 2026 are already done, and we are working already on the third house, and we are committed to deliver 6 draws in 2026.

And on the games side, we increased our portfolio further and our billings growth is on track as well. And with that, on the overall guidance, we -- our guidance for 2026 is unchanged even with the weak jackpot environment that we faced in Q1. We expect the revenues to be in the range of EUR 250 million to EUR 260 million and EBITDA to end up at EUR 70 million to EUR 75 million. On the midterm guidance, also nothing changes, double-digit annual revenue growth in the mid-teens and a 30% EBITDA margin to be expected.

And last but not least, the dividend proposal we shared already with you in March. It will be proposed together with the Supervisory Board, a dividend payment of EUR 1.40 per share. This will reflect a total payout of EUR 30 million. And the dividend payment date is planned for the 26th of May after the AGM approved. And like always in the past, we are looking, of course, to be an attractive investment for our shareholders and looking into capital allocation and we'll come back with potential share buybacks or alternative growth initiatives for the rest of the cash generated. And with that, we want to generate significant value for our shareholders.

And with that, back to Stefan for the key takeaways for today.

Thank you, Andrea. So 3 messages that we want to leave you with is, first, we continue to lay the foundation for our long-term growth strategy while consistently investing in diversification and the resilience of our business and the numbers that we delivered in the first quarter of 2026 clearly a testimony to that fact. Our growth despite a weak jackpot market reflects the resilience of our business model and our ability to effectively invest in strategic initiatives. Last but not least, we are strategically expanding our social lottery offering in Germany through Traumautoverlosung, adding a very attractive product for a very attractive customer segment.

With this, thanks for your attention, and we'll hand over to you for questions and answers.

[Operator Instructions] And we already have 2 hands up. Mr. Tim Kruse, the stage is yours.

Two quick questions from my side. Looking at the marketing spending in Q1, we are quite a bit below the run rate for the full year, if you take it that by quarter. I'm assuming that, obviously, your marketing guidance also assumes a sort of normal jackpot environment. So would it be fair to assume that if this stays as muted as it is at the moment, then your marketing spending would probably also be lower than you initially guided?

And then the second question would be on Traumautoverlosung. If the lotteries are capped to 250,000 tickets, so all that would imply EUR 2.5 million in billings. Can you maybe break that down to how that would -- yes, how that would break down into sales and also maybe how many cars you expect to raffle out this year?

Okay. Let me start with the marketing question to take that. So you are totally right. Our guidance is, of course, on a standard jackpot environment. A standard jackpot environment for ZEAL means we would expect in a full year 9 jackpots. So at least 2 in a quarter, we have now 0. So of course, the marketing run rate from Q1 is lower than we guided on. We still expect jackpots to come up. And therefore, we still continue with our guidance. But of course, you're right, if no jackpot at all in the year will appear, then we might not be able to allocate the money within our boundary conditions and therefore, not spend it. And on the...

Yes. On the Traumautoverlosung, as I said, please bear with us, we just launched the first product, and we are not going to share any additional numbers at that point in time.

We will move on to Simon Keller. This is your space, Mr. Keller.

I want to question also the or get some additional comments on the same topics that Tim was already looking at from Traumautoverlosung and also marketing. So on marketing, you mentioned that you had some tests for the charity lotteries that also is the reason for the higher cost per lead above the core brokerage. Can you explain how these tests have gone? When can we expect them to converge, like the cost per lead to converge to the historic average? Or do you think it's more structural that for social lotteries the higher cost per lead going forward as well?

And on Traumautoverlosung, can you share early indications on the ticket sales for season 0?

Thanks a lot, Simon. I will take the marketing again. So the investments into the new products are not tests anymore. These are actually the consistent marketing investments that we are doing in this area. As the charity lotteries have a higher margin and higher CRVs from the customer side, we are able to also afford these higher CPLs. So while we are tracking that our core brokerage business is rather stable, we will always expect these marketing investments into the other D2C offerings on the social lottery side to be higher because it's new product categories, it's brand investments that need to be established and also it's within our boundary condition because the CRV of these customers are better. And on cars, back to Stefan.

Yes. I unfortunately have to repeat the message today, now sent twice. We are at very early stages and thus, I'm not able to provide any additional information on cars. I can just tell you that we are super happy with the development. When you look at the activity that Traumautoverlosung has been able to generate on social media, you see early indications that this is really very, very well received. We are the first dedicated high-end car lottery in Germany. It's built on the same foundations that we have for Traumhausverlosung. So a very strong social engagement. With this, we have selected Johanniter as the charity partner for Traumautoverlosung. So bear with us in the next couple of calls, we definitely can provide more information, but we are super happy with the launch of the product.

And ladies and gentlemen, with no further questions, I will hold the room for another moment in case someone is thinking about raising their hand. What doesn't seem to be the case. Therefore, we come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for your interest in ZEAL Network SE. A big thank you also to you, Stefan and Andrea, for your presentation and your time. Should you have any further questions at a later date, please feel free to contact Senior Investor Relations Manager, Frank Hoffmann. I wish you all a successful day around the world and handing back over to Andrea once again for your closing remarks.

Yes. Thank you once again for joining and your interest at ZEAL, and we are looking forward to speak to you soon.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the Full Year 2025 Earnings Call of ZEAL Network SE. The company's CEO, Dr. Stefan Tweraser; and CFO, Andrea Behrendt, will guide you through the figures in a moment, followed by a Q&A session via audio line. And with that, I'm handing over to you, Andrea.

Thanks a lot, and good morning, everybody, and welcome to our earnings call for the full year results 2025. We are very happy to have you here. I hope you can all see the presentation. If not, please go on our website in the Investor Relations section, you will find it there. With me today is Stefan, our CFO -- CEO, and together, we will present our strong results of 2025. First of all, let me briefly walk you through our agenda for today. So we will start with an overview of our key highlights from 2025, followed by the review of the financial performance. And then we will look into 2026 with our strategic priorities and the guidance. Last but not least, we will, of course, share our dividend proposal and the main takeaways before we are opening up for our Q&A session. And with that, let me hand over to Stefan for the summary of our 2025 results.

Thank you, Andrea. And also from my side, a warm welcome to all of you on the call. More than happy to have you. Let me give you a brief summary of what we've achieved in the financial year of 2025, which was defined by a less than exciting market environment but we've been able to, regardless deliver outstanding operational results. Let me highlight 4 things. First of all, we continued to significantly expand our customer base. Andrea will dive into the details of that. We have once again improved our gross margin in the fourth quarter of last year, we've achieved a gross margin of 18.5%, a really remarkable result, and we were able to continue growing profitable on the basis of our operational strength.

But having achieved all those operational excellence has also allowed us to raise more than EUR 375 million for charitable causes, which is a significant driver of what we do here. All of this has been driven by us being able to really deliver on our strategic objectives for 2025. To remind you, we had 3 things set out for 2025. We wanted to continuously improve the acquisition performance and the profitability of our core business, Lotto24. We wanted to successfully scale Traumhausverlosung and we vowed to accelerate the growth of our games business. In all of those 3 areas, we've been able to achieve outstanding results. In our core business, we've increased the gross margin to 17.7%, which was supported by both successful pricing measures and an increase of our product and improvement of our product mix towards more profitable and more margin-strong products. Despite a less than exciting jackpot situation, we've been still able to acquire customers and the customer acquisition is one of the main strengths of our Lotto24 business.

In Traumhausverlosung, we've achieved a jaw-dropping growth of billings of more than 200%, 205% to be exact. We raffled off a total of 4 houses in 2025. And the performance of 2025 was significantly above our expectations with billings close to 40%. In terms of the houses, one outstanding performance house was the St. Peter-Ording house, which delivered the best performance of our 2025 portfolio. And in the games business, also astonishing growth more than 40%, 42% to be exact. Our games portfolio today consists of more than 650 games, which is well received by our customers. We have active customers, our active customer is increasing from 2024 to 2025 from 22,000 to more than 30,000 customers. and we generated over EUR 14 million of revenues and a very strong EBITDA contribution of our games business of EUR 6.1 million. And in both of these measures, we have surpassed our very ambitious targets.

And talking about ambitious targets. We also raised midyear in September '25, our guidance, thanks to the improved lottery gross margin and highly successful businesses, especially calling out also Traumhausverlosung and games, as Stefan already explained. We closed the year with delivering EUR 219 million in revenues and EUR 69 million in EBITDA. And now let's go in the details for our financials. Before we go into the income statement, let's put the results in context with our Jackpot situation that we had in 2025.

Just a reminder, Jackpots are the key driver for customer acquisition and on the other side, also the reactivation of existing customers. Last year was a weak jackpot environment. So we saw just 4 peak jackpots in Eurojackpot compared to an exceptional 2024 with 13 peak jackpots. In Lotto 6/49, we haven't seen any jackpots in the last 2 years. Despite this less supportive jackpot environment, we delivered really strong results and are proud of that. And on Slide #5, you will see how this translates into our financials. On this slide, let me highlight 3 numbers to you. So overall, our revenues grew by 16%, that's driven by higher billings and improved gross margin, and I will explain a bit more in detail later. On the other hand, we were able to spend 21% more on marketing and acquired a significant number of new customers. That is a real achievement in such a weak jackpot environment. And that within our efficiency guardrails that we give out to our teams, and therefore, this is a really great achievement.

And bottom line, we delivered a strong EBITDA with EUR 69 million. And we are continuing delivering efficient growth like we promise, and we are really proud of that. And now let's zoom into our top line growth. Here on the lottery billings, it's a pretty good achievement, especially comparing with 2024. That was an exceptional jackpot year. Despite the weak jackpot, we had 1.6 million customers in average life on our platform, and they spent EUR 59 and this is a normal expectation on the average billings per user that you would expect in a weak jackpot environment. And this overall translate in a billings growth of 2%. As mentioned already, the second driver is the revenue growth -- of the revenue growth is the margin increase. And here, you see our underlying lottery gross margin is the 77% significantly higher to previous year. And that's driven by pricing activities and especially the big price increase in 2024 and a steadily improving product margin where we, on a daily basis, drive improved margins in the products and also improved product market mix.

So on top of that, we were really able to double down on our customer growth. That's a relevant driver for the future growth of ZEAL and the valuation of ZEAL. Despite the weak market environment, we acquired 1.2 million new customers in 2025. And this number really underlines our ability to grow our customer base even in weak jackpot phases. I want to compare here the numbers with 2023 because this was a weak jackpot environment like this year. And here, we actually showed that we were able to acquire 96% more new customers than in previous -- in this year. And this really is the success of our strategy to diversify our product offering and make the business and the customer acquisition less dependent on jackpots. Overall, the cost per lead was at EUR 46.47. That is an expected increase as it reflects the weak jackpot environment, higher media prices and the really strategic marketing tests in reaching new target audiences especially calling out here Traumhausverlosung and the growth we have generated here. In our core brokerage business, the CPL was at EUR 41.3.

And games as well, we gained momentum in 2025. And already in the last quarters, we communicated that with you. We significantly increased our games portfolio, established new partnerships and really implemented new customer-facing features that really resonated here. And this progress shows into our numbers. Like Stefan said, we are at 30,000 MAU in games and these customers spend around EUR 40 NGR with us. And as a result, the games revenues increased by 46%, and EBITDA reached EUR 6.1 million, a great achievement.

And with that, handing over for the details on Traumhausverlosung to Stefan.

Yes. I have the good part of the presentation because Traumhausverlosung is really a product that delights us, delights our customers and delights our investors. Since we've launched the product, we have raffled off a total of 6 houses and 4 of those houses have been raffled up in 2025. We even added an international house, which we raffled off in February of this year, the Mallorca house. And all of these houses, all of these raffles have received very good feedback from the market.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the presentation, the St. Peter-Ording house, the house #4 has been the most successful house so far, really driving new active users, driving the image of the product and also driving the results that we've been able to achieve. As a first glance, the House #5, the Bavarian Forest House did deliver billings of 7.5 million users. We deliberately reduced the rate at the time between the draws, significantly increasing the cadence of the business. We started out with 91 days. Now we're at 56 days. So really driving the operational performance of the team and of the houses to drive us to new average billings and daily performance highlights. All in all, we are very proud to have achieved goals that we set out and overachieve them in the course of 2025. We are well ahead of our original business plan and look forward to the performance of House raffle in 2026 and beyond.

Speaking of 2026, I'll hand over to Andrea to guide you through the priorities of the coming year.

Thank you, Stefan. As in previous years, we translated our strategy into really tangible assets that we want to share with you and that we keep ourselves accountable for. So this year, we continue to focus on our 3 strategic pillars. First of all, in our core business, we still see potential upside for our operational margin in -- especially in high jackpot phases. At the same time, we continue to scale our efficient marketing and build a strong -- build on the strong progress that we made in 2025. And in parallel, we work on continue to diversify our product offering. That said, it's really important for us that the core -- that it's understood that the core business is still a key driver for ZEAL's long-term growth, and we see a huge potential there.

Secondly, our focus area is Traumhausverlosung, of course. Here, we remain in scaling mode like last year, and we plan in 2026 to run 6 raffles compared to 4 raffles last year. And we are targeting a billings growth of 50% year-over-year. And this will be supported by an investment into customer acquisition in the Traumhausverlosung. And the third pillar is games. We will continue to expand our games offering, our portfolio here and also will invest into user experience. And this will show into -- in significant growth with over 20% year-over-year. These strategic priorities are reflected in the guidance that we shared with you now. We expect for 2026 revenues to be in the range of EUR 250 million to EUR 260 million and the EBITDA in the range of EUR 70 million to EUR 75 million. Like always, this guidance is based on an average jackpot development, and we will see how this year goes.

But we aim also to expand our marketing significantly to EUR 85 million to EUR 95 million. And this increase of up to EUR 25 million compared to last year, demonstrates our ambition to further grow, but this always within our efficiency guardrails. Looking beyond 2026, the midterm guidance for the next years, our goals are still valid that we already shared with you. We are targeting double-digit growth in the annual revenues, in mid-teens, and we really want to, here, double down on the growth potential that is there in the German market and is there for the coming years as well.

And at the same time, we are, of course, not only focusing on top line growth but also committed to deliver strong EBITDA and with a strong focus on profitability. We want to keep our EBITDA margin over 30%. Let's come to the dividend. Following the strong financial performance in 2025, the Management Board and the Supervisory Board have decided yesterday to propose to the AGM a payment of a dividend of EUR 1.40 per share. This reflects a total payout of around EUR 30 million. As in the past, additionally to the dividend, ZEAL is looking and allocate capital via share buybacks and also into alternative growth opportunities. And our core focus is always with that in mind to generate value for our shareholders.

And with that, back to Stefan for the key takeaways.

Thank you, Andrea. So speaking of value to our shareholders, if you takeaway 3 messages from what Andrea and I have been able to share with you today, the 3 messages should be. We've been able to significantly expand our customer base in a less than favorable jackpot environment, but very strongly within the economic guidance that we give our teams for growth. We have, in addition, been able to improve our gross margin, driven by both pricing levers and product mix levers, and overall, have been able to continue to grow profitable based on the operational strength of our business. We are super happy that we've been able to share these results with you, and I hand over to Andrea to guide you through the questions and answers. Thank you for your attention.

[Operator Instructions] And we already have 4 hands up, Christian Salis. The stage is yours.

Christian from Cantor. I've got 2 questions, please. The first one, on the sales guidance, could you talk about the key drivers, again, for the expected 70% sales growth at midpoint year-over-year? And how many Dream Houses, after the 4 Dream Houses in 2025 do you plan in 2026, please?

And then second question, on the EBITDA guidance. So at midpoint, the EBITDA guidance implies around 3 percentage points margin decline. You mentioned the higher marketing investments. Could you maybe talk about the specific areas where you plan to put these marketing investments too? And maybe related to this, could you also talk about the competitive environment in the Dreamhouse Raffle?

I saw that Omaze is also pushing their marketing efforts in Germany. So how do you see the competitive landscape evolving in this segment, please?

Thanks, Christian, for your question. Let me start with the guidance topic. So on the sales side, like I told about the 3 strategic pillars, that's reflecting in all these areas, significant growth. Like we said, in the core business, we are acquiring -- planning to acquire more customers and growing significantly. We will double down on the Traumhausverlosung raffles and want to raffle out 6 houses in 2026. And additionally, we want to continue to significant double-digit growth in the games area. So in all 3 strategic areas for the year, we expect growth to happen in 2026. And on the competition...

Yes. So on the other 2 questions that you asked, Christian, and again, thanks for the questions from my side. A, when it comes to the competition of Traumhausverlosung, we definitely own the category in Germany. We also don't think that Traumhausverlosung house raffles are a winner takes all market. It's an exciting segment of the market that is continuing to grow. And we have a very clear objective as Andrea said, to substantially increase the number of houses that we are raffling off to increase the -- our ability to deliver profits on that product for our investors. And thus, the investments are very targeted within the economic guidelines that we set our teams when it comes to spend per customer and the lifetime value that we generate with these customers. So the investments as you talked about the increase in marketing spend, the investments are very targeted in terms of strengthening the performance of our products online, but also continue to establishing the brands in the more general public domain.

And next line is Tim Kruse, you may speak now.

Yes. Congratulations on the impressive year once again. Yes, just a quick follow-up on Christian's question on competition maybe in the [Foreign Language] on your core business, if you see any changes. We have 3 other parties who have a license there, just -- it will be interesting to see what the dynamics there are. And then maybe on the games business, it's still a low base, but impressive growth. So is it the 40% plus something we can expect in this year as well. And then maybe just a follow-up on the Dream houses. You were at 56 days for the Bavaria house, and now you're back at 80 days. So can you tell us what you think about the cadence of the Dream houses? I mean you said 6 this year, but how do you expect that to pan out maybe over the next years? What are your plans there?

So thanks for the question. On the brokerage business, I mean, yes, there are other providers in the German market, but none of them is anywhere near our scale, so anywhere near our ability to generate customer growth out of the market, not anybody near our ability to benefit from the offline to online movement that we see in the German market and nowhere anybody near our ability to establish a brand like Lotto24 in the German market.

So obviously, we look very closely at these competitors and can take them very seriously. But we are convinced that our ability to really drive that business at scale, both from an operation as well from a marketing perspective, really are second to none. So we think that we can definitely get the greatest chunk of the growth in the German market towards our brand.

And on the game side, we expect games overall billings growth from 20%. And of course, this year was much higher at 25%, but it's still a very ambitious goal to grow, and we are proud of that. And on the cadence for the raffles -- for the house raffles, we are, of course, looking into the dates and when it makes sense to raffle our houses based on time line and so on. But our strategic goal for this year is to raffle out 6 houses and to increase the cadence over the next years. We think house a month is a realistic target midterm.

Okay. Thank you, Andrea. Just a quick follow-up maybe on the games. I mean you're still very restricted in terms of marketing there. Can you maybe just give a quick update on sort of your regulatory improvements there? I know you are fighting to loosen those restrictions a bit. Is there anything coming up this year that might change this situation?

Yes. So we don't foresee a significant change in the regulatory environment. Obviously, we are in very close contact with the GGL to make sure that this is really a level playing field, which currently, as you know, it isn't. But given the playing field as it currently is, I think our growth is the perfect balance between being as pushy as we can. And on the other hand, taking player protection and responsible gaming really very seriously. So for the time being, as I said, we don't expect a big change, but we still think that within that environment, we can deliver very, very healthy growth in the games business.

Thank you for your questions, Tim. And the next one is Simon Keller, you should be able to speak now.

I would love to get a deeper understanding of your marketing efforts. And I guess a good starting point is the difference between your H1 and H2 '25 marketing spending. Because despite similar jackpots, there was a marketing step up by approximately EUR 10 million between H1 and H2. And I'm wondering is that only the marketing spend for Traumhausverlosung, basically is the only real explanation here. And in this context, could you please elaborate more on your overall marketing strategy? And any color here would be helpful. Maybe you can share the expected payback profile and how that is changing right now or explain how much of the marketing spend is strategically necessary for brand building.

Thanks, Simon, for your questions. So let me -- let's see if I cover all the questions that you asked. So first of all, I think the marketing increase is not only driven by Traumhausverlosung, but also that we are really doubling down on a playbook how to invest also in low jackpot situations. Our diversification is really targeted towards a more independent customer acquisition setup, also compared to low and high jackpots. So -- and we are in the past, invested significant in this area to be able to really, yes, have a proper setup also in low jackpots, and that's a real achievement.

And when you -- again, Andrea pointed that out during the presentation. I think the best comparison to judge our marketing efforts and the successes of those is when you compare between 2023 and 2025, which are years with a similar, let's say, unexciting jackpot environment. We've been able to almost more than double the customer acquisition in 2025 compared to 2023. So there are very, very targeted investments in all the digital channels as well as some brand building. But the message is that we've been substantially able to grow our customer base in, as Andrea pointed out, a weak jackpot environment.

And on the payback, our goal is continues to be a payback period for all acquired customers within a 2- to 3-year horizon. So the profile of our customer didn't change. So we have a very healthy lifetimes supported by very strong margins for the customers and are still targeting on that one, and that these are the efficiency guardrails that we are giving our teams on every campaign, every channel.

That's very helpful. I have one follow-up question. And that's particularly between H1 and H2 this year. Have you learned something in H1 that allowed you to be basically more efficient with your marketing spend? Because the jackpot situation was similar and your target by -- your aim at looking at the payback period, probably hasn't changed either. So maybe you have become more efficient. That's a fair assumption?

Yes. What we can definitely point that is that we've been able to expand the scope of our digital marketing efforts. So we have more channels, not just the usual ones, kind of the big Google or Meta channels, but really have been able to expand that footprint into the smaller channels very successfully. We've been able to really excel in our approach to partnerships, which has been a significant driver of new customers, both for our existing Lotto24 business as well as for the new businesses.

But we cannot rest on these learnings also already in the first quarter -- in the first few months of this year, we've been able to leverage learnings into new channels. So it's an ongoing quest to make sure that we are on the top of the game, not just in the channels, but also in the abilities that we apply to these channels.

Awesome. I have one more question, if I may, and that's because it's linked to the marketing spend, and it's around the midterm margin target with the 30% that you've outlined. Should we see it as a floor that you're willing or going to achieve irrespective of the growth opportunities and jackpot environment? So basically, will you steer your marketing efforts such that you will be able to achieve the 30% midterm either way?

Yes. So the EBITDA margin of 30% we see as a floor. We see that in high jackpot phases where we can invest even more than we currently guided you on. We will nevertheless outgrow on the top line. So bottom line, there will be always much more growth available also in this situation. So yes, you can take the 30% as a full.

Thank you for your questions, Simon. And next line is Abed Jarad.

To be honest, most of my questions regarding marketing spending were already answered. But when do you expect this marketing spend to normalize? I mean, in 2025 and 2026, they grew both expected to grow more than revenue. When do you expect this trend to normalize?

For us, it's really -- we are proud when we can grow marketing because that's within our efficiency guardrails and the payback period of 2 to 3 years. And as long as we are able to be in these guardrails, we want to spend as much marketing as possible. Because it pays off and it generates significant shareholder value. So really, we are proud of that. And we still see a lot of potential in the online lottery markets to switch from offline to online. So we don't think this will stop.

And Lucas [indiscernible] this is the stage for questions.

I would like to follow on -- also on the marketing topic at first. Maybe you can elaborate a little bit more on your difference between marketing spending this year and last year in terms of the 3 -- or the main products like lottery games and the Traumhausverlosung. What could we expect in terms of these higher marketing spend?

Thanks, Lucas.

Where do you want to allocate this?

Yes. Maybe starting. So in general, the strategy doesn't change there, although you have to see that 2025 was a weak jackpot year. Therefore, we were able to allocate less money than we would in a normal jackpot year. And as our guidance is based on a normal jackpot year, the biggest change is there that we are actually expecting to grow our investments in the core market because we always give guidance on a normal jackpot year. So marketing in the core business will increase.

On the other hand, in Traumhausverlosung, we are investing similar to last year. And on the games side, we are still in the testing phase for customer acquisition. So no significant marketing investments are allocated to games today. That might change during the year, but that's the situation we have today.

And I think if I build on what Andrea just said, 3 main messages for our marketing. The first one is, we really approach this kind of as an open budget situation as long as the teams are able to spend within our economic guidelines, which are how much we want to spend per customer and what is the customer lifetime value that we get back so that we can always find the balance in the 2- to 3-year payback horizon. That's point number one.

Point #2 is, given that it's kind of an open budget situation, we push for opportunities in high jackpot situations, which is kind of the easier environment. But we are also very, very bullish that we've improved our abilities to attract customers in low jackpot situations. Again, I'll point to that 2023 to 2025 comparison, where we've faced a similar challenging jackpot situation, but have been able to acquire almost double the new customers that we wanted to acquire. And finally, we always push for efficiency in new channels, in new applications of our marketing money to make sure that we really capture all opportunities that are out there.

And as Andrea pointed out, test new approaches and really push our teams to make sure that we capture all opportunities that are out there. So bottom line is, and I just can second what Andrea said, the more marketing that we can spend within our economic guidelines, the better for us. Because it's a strong indicator of customer growth, which is a substantial driver of our business.

Okay. But to make it clear, if I take your marketing guidance of EUR 85 million to EUR 90 million and compare it with 2025, let's say, roughly EUR 16 million to EUR 20 million or EUR 21 million, that is mainly then going to lottery again?

Lottery is our main driver of the business, our main driver of customer acquisition. And again, the foundation of this guidance is an average jackpot situation, which would have led to higher marketing spend already in 2025. So would there have been a more, let's say, favorable jackpot situation in 2025, the overall increase of marketing spend between '25 and '26 would not be that high. But again, we are allocating marketing budgets on an average jackpot situation.

And then my second question is concerning the topic of products and new products. I remember in the last meetings that you have also for 2026, the topic of new products on the agenda. Is there anything you can also share today with us?

So when it comes to new products, I think it's good to look into all 3 elements, all 3 pillars of our business. In our core business, Lotto24, we are driving product innovation like team player that adds a social component to the kind of standard lottery games. And we are very happy with the development in this area. So adding exciting opportunities to play lotteries within the Lotto24 is one priority.

The second priority is that we add additional games and additional entertainment opportunities in the games segment itself. We are now at 650 games. Quite a few of them have been developed in-house. The majority obviously is delivered by a partner and we are continuously expanding that scope to make sure that our slot portfolio second to none in the German legal market.

And then finally, we think that with -- especially with Traumhausverlosung but also with freiheit+, we have found products that have a great product market fit that are very well received by the German consumer. And thus, we are not only looking into additional categories of social lotteries but also are exploring opportunities to look beyond Germany for a product like Traumhaus with a proven product market fit.

But we can still expect that for 2026 or has there anything changed?

No. We are, for sure, looking in diversification. And as soon as we are able to communicate something, we will.

Okay. And then the third topic is around cash allocation. I think that maybe the disappointing part of today's release that on the one hand, you have around EUR 60 million of free cash flow generated last year, but only allocate EUR 30 million, so roughly the half of that in terms of dividend. But what is about the other half? Is there still a progress of thinking about it? Or how should we think about the second part of allocating cash in terms of share buybacks?

Exactly. Like that's what I said, and you have seen that in the past, right? We are looking into share buybacks, and we are looking into exciting investment opportunities. So please, I think you shouldn't be disappointed. You should be rather proud. We will find a good use of that money to be allocated.

Just to second what Andrea said, considered to be a very strong war chest that we have that can be invested into either exciting growth opportunities or very attractive share buybacks. So watch this space and no reason to be disappointed in any shape or form.

Thank you very much for your questions, Lucas. And we have a person dialing in from Great Britain with phone, with the phone number ending 1610. [Operator Instructions] And you may ask your questions.

So I think my question on the cash has been partially answered, but I just want to maybe give a little bit of a push just to see in terms of timing. Is this something we can, could we expect an announcement in the next few quarters? Or is there something that you think on a more full year basis? Could you give us some color around that, please?

Thanks for your question. Could you let us know who you are?

Luka from Berenberg.

Okay. Great. So thanks for the question. So we are looking, like I said, into share buybacks and investment opportunities. As soon as we have something to communicate, we'll let you know. Hopefully, that will happen in 2026.

Thank you very much for your question. And next in line is Peter [indiscernible].

I have 3 questions. Which online penetration in the lottery market do you expect in 2026, and the 2 following years thereafter? In 2025, we have seen 31%. Question two, which online penetration do you expect in the long term? Is it still between 50% and 70% or maybe more? In which year do you expect an online penetration above 50%? Last question #3, which total lottery market volume in billion, do you expect in the long term? Currently, I have seen that we have a market of approximately EUR 8.3 billion.

Thanks a lot, Peter, for your questions. So on the online penetration, of course, we are not able to give you exact numbers for the next years. But what we see and have seen in the last years is the online penetration increases year-over-year. It increases more when we have high jackpot phases and it increases a little bit less when we have low jackpot phases. So something in between, but we see an average of 1% -- 2 percentage points increase year-over-year. So yes, that should answer your first question, the 2 of them. And the last one was on?

The market volume.

The total market volume. On the online market, we always communicate that we see long-term ambition of having a market of EUR 5 billion to EUR 7 billion in online lotteries.

In online, yes, but in the total market?

EUR 10 billion. That's quite stable. It's not changing significantly.

But this is based on data which are very old, yes? So no update?

No updates.

And some follow-up questions from Tim Kruse.

Yes. Just one actually on the Traumhausverlosung and the D2C share, it's now -- the last one was at 53%. I was just wondering 2 things, Andrea. So what is your expectations and maybe also reflect of what you thought you could achieve here on the outset when you started this product, and how important this D2C share in terms of profitability for you?

Yes. So we set out the strategic goal to acquire new target audiences with that product. Therefore, the D2C shop is actually -- D2C share is a relevant strategic goal for us, and we want to increase that time over time. Here, it's really about audiences who would not show in Lotto24 for EJ and LOTTO 6aus49, but rather are interested in a more innovative product. And here, we are really seeing that this is a younger audience, maybe a little bit more female. And therefore, it's really a strategic goal for us, and we are tracking towards that.

And is there a difference in customer acquisition cost between the channels there, just out of interest?

There is a difference in customer acquisition costs. That's why we also share the 2 CPLs with you, one for the whole group and one for the core broker because costs in the new product, especially Traumhausverlosung is higher. Why is that the case? Because, of course, it's still a category that is building up and the brand that is building up. Therefore, this is a bit less efficient than our core brokerage investments. But with a very healthy lifetime value for our customers because, as you know, it's a high-margin product for us.

Exactly. Overall margin profile is better as well, right?

Exactly.

And also a follow-up and the last hand up for now is from Abed.

Sorry, I forgot to take back my question, sorry.

Okay. Thank you so much. So with that, we have no questions left. Ladies and gentlemen, I will hold the room for a moment if there should be one in the line. And this doesn't seem to be the case.

We, therefore, come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you very much for your interest in ZEAL Network SE. A big thank you also to you, Stefan and Andrea for your presentation and your time. Should you have any further questions at a later date, please feel free to contact Senior Investor Relations Manager, Frank Hoffmann, I wish you all the successful day around the world and handing over to you, Andrea, once again for your closing remarks.

Yes. Thanks a lot. We are excited that you all joined our call this morning and your interest in ZEAL, and we are very excited to deliver a strong 2026.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a warm welcome to today's earnings call of the ZEAL Network SE following the publication of the Q3 figures of 2025. I am delighted to welcome the CEO, Dr. Stefan Tweraser; and the CFO, Andrea Behrendt, who will guide us through the presentation and the results. [Operator Instructions].

So having said this, Andrea, the stage is yours.

Thanks a lot, and good morning, everybody. So welcome to our earnings call for Q3 this morning for ZEAL Network. I hope you have the presentation. If not, please have a look on our Investor Relations section on our homepage there, everything is available.

So before we start, I really want to welcome Stefan. Stefan, your first earnings call with us. So I'm happy you're joining us today, and I'm looking forward to build the future together with you. So let's go to the content. The agenda of today's call. We will start with a brief overview on the highlights of the first 9 months. Then let's dive into the financials. That's what we are here for to talk about and then have a look on the strategic focus and talk about our updated guidance 2025. And then we will wrap it up with the key takeaways and go to our Q&A session.

And with that, for the first time, handing over to Stefan for a short summary.

Andrea, thank you very much, and good morning, everyone, also from my side. I'm obviously super excited to be here. I've joined ZEAL now a bit more than 2 months ago, and it has been a blast. I really enjoy being here and obviously enjoy attending this call with you to update you on our financials. The headline that we want to communicate is that we continue to execute our strategy very consistently and very successfully.

As you all know, a major driver of our business is the jackpot environment, and Andrea will deep dive into this. The jackpot environment that we've been able to witness in the first 3 quarters of this year has been below the statistical average. But despite this not so welcoming environment, we've been able to really drive our business very successfully. We have accelerated the growth of our customer base. We have been able to continue to significantly increase the gross margin of our business and thus also have grown the profitability of ZEAL Network SE as a consequence, and you noticed, we have been able to adjust our ambitious targets upwards and have increased our guidance in September 2025.

But back to Andrea for all the details.

Thanks, Stefan. Yes, let's go through the details of the financials. On Slide #6, you will get the jackpot environment. Like you know, it's really important to put our results into context from the jackpot side. The jackpot is an upside potential that if it comes, we have the option to acquire even more new customers and reactivate existing ones. So it's a real driver. But in the first 9 months of 2025, it was unfortunately a weak jackpot situation, but we delivered strong results with that. We saw only 4 peaks in the 9 months this year, while last year, for example, we had 6 peaks already by end of Q3. And as you all know, Q4 was a blast last year.

Like I said, despite this situation, we delivered strong results, and let's see how that translates into financials on Slide #7. Here, I want to highlight 3 numbers for you. So let's talk about revenues. The revenues grew by 34%, and that's driven by an increased billings of 12% year-over-year and a notable improvement of the margin, as we know, based on the price increase that happened last year. We increased also our marketing spend by 35%, investing into future growth of ZEAL and acquired a significant number of new customers in such a weak jackpot environment. And bottom line, we delivered a strong EBITDA of EUR 54 million, and we really are maintaining this momentum of efficient growth, what is really matter for us.

Let's take a closer look on the billings, Slide #8. We grow our billings 12% year-over-year. This is based on an increased customer base of 17%. That is based on Q4 strong acquisition from last year, but also the new FT&Ps or leads that we acquired this year. And so we reached over 1.5 million monthly active users this year on our platform, and they spent around EUR 59 per month, a really strong number. Previously, I already mentioned that our margin increased. And the key driver here is really the successful price increase from last year. And on the other hand, what we are really actively working on steadily improving our product market mix. And herefore, we ended up with an overall gross margin of 17.5%.

So the other side of the growth for ZEAL is the customer acquisition, and you see that on Slide 10. We acquired in the first 9 months, 879,000 new customers. This is a clear sign of effective marketing also in weak jackpot environments. And we are really able to grow our customer base also in these situations. And that's a real -- also a strategic goal for us, as you know. This overall led to a CPL of EUR 46.5. And this was, of course, an expected increase compared to last year because of the weak jackpot environment, but also because of overall increased media prices and the investments that we are doing in the new businesses to really test new target audiences and widen our market. The CPL for the core brokerage business was actually at 42.5% on levels as expected.

On our other side of the business, the games business, we are seeing continuous growth and improved traction. So we increased our games portfolio up to nearly 600 games and see how the product features really resonate with our customers. So overall, the business grew by 51% year-over-year on the revenue side.

And now last but not least, to our Traumhausverlosung. We already have done 4 draws this year with our -- or have planned our 4 draws this year for the house raffles. In this slide, you will see the performance of the first 4 houses for Traumhausverlosung. And we also, this time, added the overall duration of the campaign to give you even a bit more context for the numbers. And as you see, the House 4, our house in Sankt Peter-Ording was a success. It was higher than all our expectations and even previous performances. So really a strong delivery here. And we are delighted to announce that we are already on our fifth house. So we have a beautiful house that you see there on the picture in Bavaria that you are able to win until Monday. So maybe you want to still buy a ticket and get your chance on it. It's so far my favorite house. But then we are looking already on the next house campaign. And here, we choose the favorite holiday destination for the Germans. It's in Majorca. So we are really waiting for this one to go and yes, go live.

And with this, let's give an update on our strategic focus areas and our guidance. On Slide 14, you will see the 3 focus areas that I presented to you already in March and that I'm always updating you on because they are so important to us. So firstly, we continue to improve our customer acquisition and profitability in our core brokerage business. And you have seen in the first 9 months, our underlying gross margin is at 17.5%. That's a really strong number. And we already improved our customer acquisition in this weak jackpot environment. The second focus area, Traumhausverlosung, we are scaling Traumhausverlosung, and as you see, the numbers are running well. And we delivered already the fourth house campaign and all of them actually exceed our expectations.

And on Games, we also delivered what we told you. We are currently on track to deliver over EUR 14 million in revenues and will -- we saw year-to-date so far a year-over-year growth of 51%. And on the guidance, you know that we already increased our ambitious guidance for this year. And thanks to the increased lottery gross margin and also the positive development of Traumhausverlosung, we communicated to you an increase. And now we expect revenues for 2025 to be in the range of EUR 205 million to EUR 215 million and EBITDA is expected to be in the range of EUR 63 million to EUR 68 million.

And now over to Stefan again for the key takeaways. And after that, we will head to the Q&A session.

Thank you, Andrea. And as you can see, everyone on the call, it has obviously been a great environment for me to start because we've been able to accelerate the growth of our customer base. We have added about 880,000 first-time paying customers and have been able to motivate more than 1.5 million people to be active on our sites on a monthly basis. We have increased our gross margin to remarkable 17.5%, driven by both price measures as well as product mix improvements and that overall led to a very profitable business. The strength of our business led to an increase in the profitability and thus an increase in the guidance that we've been able to give to the markets.

This concludes our presentation. And obviously, we are now happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Yes. Thank you very much for the dive into your third quarter, and congratulations on your results. Stefan and Andrea. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now move on to the Q&A session and are happy to take your questions in person via audio line. [Operator Instructions] We will start with the questions from Henry Wendisch. You should be able to speak now?

Yes. Welcome, Stefan. I have a couple of questions. First one, I think, is regarding the recently upgraded guidance. I think on sales, I totally agree with your new guidance. But on EBITDA, now that we have seen the Q3 results, you're implying EUR 9 million to EUR 14 million of Q4 EBITDA, and this seems rather weak in my view. So do you also agree that this is a rather conservative estimate? Or are you expecting any sort of jump costs that are not foreseen by us in that sense? And then, I think, shall we do all at once or one by one?

We can do one by one, Henry. So let's start with the guidance one. So yes, I mean, we had strong Q3 results. You have seen that. I agree with you that we will most likely end up at the upper end of the guidance. So you're not seeing anything wrong. But of course, also in Q4, we want to grow and invest into efficient marketing, and we are searching for these opportunities all the way. So that's just like giving us with the guidance a little bit of breathing room.

Okay. Understood. Next one is regarding the user activity, just on the Q3 level, I've seen a large jump in activity, and it was bigger than I expected actually. I wanted to maybe get a bit more color on how this happened. I mean we've seen 2 peak jackpots in Q3, which might be a result or actually probably a big result. But is it also maybe that there is a recovery of the strong cohort that you acquired in Q4 that is sort of -- they played quite well in Q4 and then Q1, Q2, the activity went down and now it went up again because they sort of gained trust with you and they sort of also returned to a higher player frequency as they got to know your offering and how it works at ZEAL and the activity is going up. So is it a mix of both? Or what's the real answer here?

Yes. I think you're kind of right, but it's not only the Q4 2024 cohort, but it's actually basically all cohorts really got well activated in this Q3 with the 2 peak jackpots. We saw a lot of activity there. And on top of that, really also the Dream House Raffles is really driving activity on the platform in the existing customer base, but also bringing in new customers. So that's the 2 main reasons that we can mention here.

Right. And then on the gross margin improvement, we've seen the 2.2% in price optimization on a 9-month basis, but now Q3 is the first quarter without this base effect sort of. So does that mean that there was no price effect in Q3 and then the increase in gross margin in lottery was only driven by the mix effect.

Exactly. If you compare Q3 to previous year, you have now a clean gross margin comparison. So there is no additional price increase, no relevant price increase topics there. What you see is mainly really the hard work in optimizing our product mix, getting our customers focusing on premium products and therefore, increasing the overall gross margin.

Good. Got it. Understood. Next question is regarding the user intake. I think it was the second largest user intake we've seen following, I think, Q4 2024, which was the biggest. And that with "only 2 big jackpots." So is there anything, I mean, beyond marketing efficiency gains that has driven this strong intake? I mean, obviously, there's a Traumhausverlosung effect in that because a lot of people signed up for that as well, but are we missing anything?

No, exactly. I mean there are 2 points. So the one point, Traumhausverlosung, exactly. So we really see that this is a product that works very, very well in customer acquisition. So it drives customers into our platform. On top of that, we really worked hard on optimizing our marketing playbook in certain jackpot environments so that we are not only able to harvest a lot of new customers during peak jackpots, but also in lower jackpot phases. So I think that's, yes, a combined success of both measurements that the team is driving.

Great. And then I can jump over to Dream House. It was quite a big, and I was surprised positively by the demand there regarding especially average billing per user, and if my math is correct, also the average revenue, which developed proportionately. Is there any -- besides the big demand, any effect that maybe played a role that pushed this average billing per user figure higher than the previous draws?

I think we -- also on top of the normal demand increase, like you already mentioned it, we pushed the product with different price points into our existing customer base, and that increased the average billings per user here.

Right. Cool. And then my last question also regarding the Traumhausverlosung Dream House raffle. We've seen in the last, I think, 2 or 3 quarters that Omaze sort of your small investment from the U.K., they -- what you copied from them to U.K., now they copied you in Germany, and they have quite, I think, very, very similar offering, and it looks almost the same. So what's your sort of your assessment on this? How are they performing against you? And do you see this as a threat maybe? Or what's sort of your take?

No. First of all, like I always said, I get a lot of this question, we were welcoming competition, and it's good competition. Especially we see that Omaze helps us actually with their investments into this product category to make this really a relevant product category in Germany because the marketing pressure that comes in now from 2 providers helps really to make this known product concept in Germany. So it's not a threat. We are happy to see that it also works for them. As you know, we are also invested in Omaze and no negative impact there.

Okay. But you're also not teaming up in any sense, but this is -- so vice versa spillover effects, but not like you have a joint effort.

No, no. I mean we are competitors.

Thank you for your questions, Henry. And we will move on to Tim Kruse in a moment. [Operator Instructions].

Yes, a lot of questions already asked by Henry, but a few follow-ons. Can you confirm that the lottery margin, even if my calculations, excluding the Dream House raffle, the core lottery margin was very, very strong in Q3. So is that something from a mix effect that we should look at in the next quarters as well?

I mean we told you already that we are on a high gross margin and that we see this sustainable, although Q3 is, of course, a special effect because you have 2 peak jackpots and you had -- this drives, of course, especially sales on the lottery clubs that has a significantly increased margin compared to the core brokerage business. So you need to adjust it a little bit down, but not like massively.

Yes. Okay. Okay. Understood. And then on marketing, that was significantly above last year and also the first 2 quarters, you said that you will be planning to increase marketing. Can you maybe split that a bit? Was that a lot coming from the Dream House raffle? And what is sort of the expectation for Q4, maybe just sort of a similar or slightly lower level? That would be helpful.

Yes. On the marketing side, it has 2 effects. So of course, we are trying, like I said, also in weak jackpot situations, to acquire new customers in our core brokerage business. And therefore, you see that this worked out, and we were able to efficiently acquire. And on the other hand, you're right, of course, the acquisition of Dream House raffle works very well, and we are investing relevant amounts there as well to grab as much of the market as possible as fast and efficient as possible.

Maybe a follow-up on the Dream House. Can you give us a bit of guidance in terms of the number of houses? I mean you are still at a quite similar pace in terms of days or duration between the periods. What are your expectations looking into next year in terms of the number of houses you will be expecting to raffle?

Our idea is to increase the frequency clearly because the demand is there, and it's a really well-known product. So this year, we were able to deliver at the end 4.5 houses, let's say. The draw of the last house will be beginning of next year. So you can, for sure, add a few houses on top of that for next year.

Okay. Perfect. And then maybe finally, personnel costs in Q3 were quite a bit higher also than the previous quarters. Were there any one-offs we have to look at? Or is there any sort of volume-related, yes, personnel costs there? Or is that a level which we should look at sort of for the next quarters as well?

I think there was one special effect that is really a one-off because of our change in the CEO position. Of course, we have to record for that, and we put everything of that already into our Q3 results inside. And we also had some increase on the short-term and long-term incentives because of the success of the company. But as we want to be successful also of the future quarters, I would say that's rather something that we would not define as a one-off.

And we will move on to the next person in line, Henrik [indiscernible], the stage is yours.

[Foreign Language].

[Foreign Language] I will switch to English, if it's okay, but we can follow up just because we have some audience that don't speak German. So yes, on the overall guidance, like I said, I expect us clearly to end up at the top of the -- on the top range of the guidance on 2 things that I just want to communicate. It's like -- for us, it's always the jackpots driving significantly top line growth. So if Q4 last year was amazing, and that's true, that doesn't mean it needs to be this year. It could be also not the case. So we are already beginning of November. We just have one more chance to get a jackpot run this year.

Otherwise, there will be no more jackpots this year lining up because they need a certain time to build up. So that's already kind of envisaged in this guidance. And on the bottom line, if you talk about EBITDA, it's for us really, we want to have the breathing space of power on the marketing investments. If we see investment opportunities, we want to do them. And of course, they might not pay off already in 2025, but in the next years. And therefore, we want to leave us with this breathing space. So there's nothing hidden or any other investments. It's really just we want to have that opportunity to still in Q4, invest if we see opportunities and invest into customer acquisition. That's the key point here.

[Foreign Language].

[Foreign Language]. We want the same.

With this, we will move on to Mr. [indiscernible] from [indiscernible]. You should be able to speak now.

It's [indiscernible]. Can you hear me well?

Yes.

Okay. I have a question, and this question is more towards your midterm growth algorithm. On the Page 15 of your presentation, it says you target continuously double-digit revenue growth in the mid-teens and continuously expanding EBITDA margin. My question is, if you look to these outer years, how the scale effects are going to unfold towards these outer years? And how are the cost blocks developing? And specifically, I would be interested in the marketing spend. It was in the region of 31% to 32% of sales in the last 2 years and this year. So I'm curious how the further growth is going to scale into profitability.

Yes. So I cannot give you a fixed percentage on our marketing investment. But what I can tell you is... Sorry?

Maybe directionally. So just...

Also not directionally. Let me tell you why, because we really are keen on acquiring customers now than in the future and really generate value for our shareholders. And therefore, we really look into the opportunities. We don't see any relevant limits that will limit us on marketing investments unless we don't fulfill our boundary conditions on efficiencies that we are setting ourselves. And therefore, if it's today -- this year, we guided you on EUR 60 million to EUR 70 million, maybe next year, it's even a bit more because we see more opportunities, right? So that's the kind of mindset that we have. We want to generate growth, efficient growth, of course, that then builds up the value of this company, the additional value that we have. So I'm -- that's really our guidance. We are not limiting us on the investment side. That's what I want to communicate.

So to sum it up, it's basically you want to keep your opportunistic position on marketing spend. But as an investor, it's also very important to see how this scales if you can achieve these growth rates and how this transfers into margin.

Exactly. And therefore, we always communicate, and you will see that in the numbers that 80% to 85% of that top line growth has to go to bottom line. That's our goal. That's what we also communicate with these increased EBITDA margins, but it's better to look at the EBITDA margin even without marketing to really see how this efficiency gain is there and the scalability of this business is really showing up.

And a final point on this. Can you give me -- if you see that those new activities, newer businesses also kind of as a marketing spend to win -- to acquire customers, is it then that for your traditional, let's say, brokerage model, yes, that the marketing cost to sales relatively declined?

Yes, exactly. That's why we also started -- I think, 2 quarters ago, started to also communicate to you the CPL, so the cost per lead, for the core brokerage business to really give you a baseline for that because that's the standard. But I want to also make very clear that we are also growing in the core brokerage business. And if we see investment opportunities there, I mean, it's still underpenetrated market where we can still double the online penetration. And therefore, we see a lot of investment opportunities also there within the next years.

And we will move on to our -- for now, last hand up, Jörg Philipp Frey. You should be able to speak now.

Jörg Philipp Frey of Warburg Research. A lot was covered already. So I would stick to marketing and the cost per lead actually. You mentioned that the increase of media prices played a significant role in the 31% increase. Can you be a bit more precise how much of this increase was by media spending and how much by the impact of a weaker jackpot environment? Any idea there?

Yes, it's hard to separate these 2 things, right, because we are just paying one price, but our indication is that overall platform media prices increased around 10% year-over-year.

As I've seen, it is mostly driven by the big Internet players like Google or Facebook [indiscernible] significantly. Are you exploring alternative media channels, meaning venues like out-of-home or in-app advertising, where we've seen -- for example, in the in-app advertising, we've seen a substantial increase in eyeballs, but a decrease in prices. Is there something which -- where you are looking at for additional efficiency gains?

Absolutely. We are always trying to find new ways to attract new customers in the most efficient and profitable way. So depending on the jackpot situations, we have various media scenarios that we are employing and always new channels that we are adding. At the end of the day, it's the challenge to find the right balance between volume and price, but new channels obviously play an important role here.

That's good. And lastly, one housekeeping question. If I understood it correctly regarding taxes, you have kind of a EUR 4 million positive one-off regarding deferred taxes. And otherwise, we should assume an underlying tax rate of 32%. Does that...

[indiscernible] right, yes.

And all the best. Best Luck, you always need for jackpots.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Frey. And in the meantime, we have received no further questions. We, therefore, come to the end of today's earnings call. Thank you for joining and all your questions and your interest in the ZEAL Network SE. Should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Frank Hoffmann from Investor Relations. A big thank you also to Stefan and Andrea for your presentation and the time you took to answer the questions. I wish you all a lovely remaining autumn week. Maybe the next Dream House is yours. And with this, I hand over again to Andrea for some final remarks.

Yes. Thanks a lot. Yes, like -- I can just repeat that. Thanks again for joining this morning and your interest in ZEAL. I'm also very happy to see or hear new investors popping up in the earnings call and asking questions. So really, really appreciate that. And of course, special thanks to you, Stefan, your first earnings call, well done. So more to come. Thanks a lot, and have a lovely Wednesday.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and I warmly welcome you to today's earnings call of the ZEAL Network SE following the publication of the half year figures of 2025 earlier this morning. I'm delighted to welcome the CEO, Helmut Becker; and the CFO, Andrea Behrendt, who will guide us through the presentation and the results shortly.

[Operator Instructions] And after the presentation, we will move on to a Q&A session in which you will be allowed to place your questions directly via the audio line. Questions via chat cannot be submitted today. And having said this, Andrea, this stage is yours.

Thanks a lot. Good morning, everyone. Great to have you joining us this morning for ZEAL's half year earnings call. You should be all be seeing the presentation. If not, please have a look at our Investor Relations section on our website there. The presentation is available.

Here's what we will cover today. First, a short look at the H1 summary. Then we will dive into the details of the financials. We will follow up with an update on strategic focus and guidance, and we will wrap it up with our key takeaways. After that, we are happy to take your questions.

And with that, handing over to Helmut, please?

Thanks, Andrea, and welcome, and good morning also from my side. The headline for the first half of the year is that we are consistently and successfully executing against our strategy. Despite a weak jackpot environment, both compared to statistical expectations and especially compared to previous year, we've improved our gross margin once more. We've grown our customer base and we've raised revenue and as a result increased EBITDA to more than EUR 35 million in the first half of 2025.

In addition, we have people news. Carola Gräfin von Schmettow was elected Chairwoman of the Supervisory Board. And we found my successor, Stefan Tweraser will join the Executive Board on August 25 and become CEO on September 15.

Back to Andrea.

Thanks. Now let's get into the details of H1 financials. Let's set the scene with the jackpot environment. As you know, jackpots are crucial for ZEAL, both in customer acquisition and in customer reactivation.

The first half year saw only two peak jackpots compared to six peak jackpots last year. So it was a weak jackpot environment. But despite this, we delivered strong performance in the first two quarters. This was driven by significant growth also from the customer base in Q4 last year.

Now on Slide 7, you will see how this reflects in our financials. Here, I want to call out three key numbers. Revenues are up 32%, driven by 4% billings growth and strong margin growth. Marketing spend up by 14% and we acquired more new customers than ever before in such a weak jackpot environment. And bottom line, we delivered a strong EBITDA of EUR 35 million, with the continuation of the momentum that we saw already in Q1.

Let's take a closer look on the 4% billings growth on the lottery side, despite the challenging jackpot environment, of course. On the back of a strong Q4 customer acquisition and customer cohorts, we achieved 1.5 million monthly active users. And these customers continue to spend an average of EUR 58 per month.

As I previously mentioned, the second key driver behind the revenue growth is our margin expansion. We delivered a lottery gross margin of 17.3%, driven by the successful price increase that we had introduced last year in June and a steadily improving product market mix.

Now let's turn to the other topic that is important to us. Our growth, our customer acquisitions on the customer acquisition side, on Slide 10. We acquired 499,000 new customers in the first half year, a record high for 6 months with such a weak two peak jackpots. This underlines the strength of our marketing strategy and our ability to grow the customer base even in weak jackpots. The cost per lead was EUR 46.9, which reflects the impact of the weaker jackpot environment as expected, higher media costs, and strategic marketing tests that we are doing currently to target new customer segments, especially in our newer businesses.

In our lottery brokerage business, the CPL was EUR 41.7 demonstrating the efficiencies that we have in our core business.

And then we have Games. Our Games business continues to gain momentum, and we enhance our Games portfolio and introduce new product features and this pays off. We successfully grew the numbers of players as well as the average revenues generated. This results in an impressive 49% year-over-year Games revenues growth. This is a clear signal that our customers see value in our offering.

And with that, handing over to Helmut for our Traumhausverlosung update.

Thanks, Andrea. We have successfully raffled off our third Dream House. I'd say three successful House Raffles is now a pattern. On this slide, we give you an overview of all three completed House Raffles so far. To help you compare the data, we've added the Raffle duration on this slide. All three House Raffles have been very successful, roughly in the same ballpark and certainly more successful than we had planned originally.

Our fourth House Raffle campaign started end of May. It's a beautiful house at the North Sea in St. Peter-Ording. You see it on the slide. And up until now, it shows the strongest performance metrics that we've seen so far. The draw of the fourth house will happen on the 15th of September, and we've already lined up the next two houses.

Back to Andrea.

Perfect. On Slide 14, we are highlighting the three strategic areas -- focus areas for 2025. The same priorities I shared already with you beginning of the year.

So firstly, we strengthened our customer acquisition and profitability in our core brokerage business. And we make great progress here. In H1, we achieved an underlying lottery gross margin of over 17%, as mentioned already, and we improved customer acquisition even in the weak jackpot environment.

Secondly, we are scaling Traumhausverlosung following the successful launch. We heard already from Helmut that House 4 is delivering the strongest performance to date, and we remain on track to deliver our four draws per year, that is already exceeding all our initial expectations.

And thirdly, we continue to grow the Games offering. Our portfolio has now expanded to over 480 Games, and we delivered 49% year-over-year growth.

In summary, we are well on track to deliver on all the strategic promises we made. All-in-all, we are reaffirming our full year guidance for 2025. Following a strong start in Q1 and Q2 this year, we remain confident in this outlook we shared with you, and we expect to end up in the upper range. At the same time, we are actively reviewing additional investment opportunities, particularly we want to accelerate growth in our new business areas. Of course, with the overall goal to drive long-term value for our shareholders.

And now handing over to Helmut to close the presentation with the key takeaways.

Thanks, Andrea. So our gross margin is now above 17%. We continue to grow the business. The strength of our business leads to strong and increasing profitability with an EBITDA above EUR 35 million for the first half of the year and an EBITDA margin at 35%.

Finally, as this is my last earnings call, I would like to say goodbye and thanks to you, our investors and analysts. I thoroughly enjoyed the last 14 years with ZEAL: 2 as a Supervisory Board member, 2 as a board member and then 10 as CEO. I've led ZEAL through multiple transformations, and this has been hugely rewarded.

Most importantly, I'm very grateful to my fantastic team for their support and dedication and not least the many things I learned from them. They have done the heavy lifting.

Looking forward, let me just say this. There is still enormous growth potential for ZEAL, and ZEAL is better positioned than ever to capture this growth, especially with a strong team that we have built, together with our leaders and Andrea and Paul on the Executive Board.

My last duty for ZEAL will be to welcome my successor, Stefan, support his onboarding and hand over the business as best I can. I would cheer him on. And I will remain a shareholder. I would like to thank you for your trust, support, questions and feedback. Thank you.

So now back to me. So thank you for the dive into your first half year, and congratulations on the results. So we will now move on to the Q&A session and are happy to take your questions. And to keep this conversation engaging, we appreciate it if you ask your questions via person and the audio line. [Operator Instructions] And the first one is Tim Kruse.

Congratulations on a great quarter once again. Two questions from my side. First one, maybe to Andrea on the marketing spending. I mean, you reiterated the guidance for EUR 60 million to EUR 70 million. However, H1 was slightly below half of that. So what can we expect for the second half, some additional marketing initiatives? Or is it fair to assume that we are probably more at the lower end of that corridor you're guiding for?

Yes. I think the corridor still stands. Of course, we have two drivers that impact our spend in the second half of the year. On the first hand, it's a jackpot situation. So unfortunately, we cannot forecast that, but we assume standard jackpot situation and the spend there. So a bit higher than what we had in H1. And additionally, like I already said, we are looking in investment opportunities, and these will be mainly on the marketing side.

Okay. Understood. And then, second question to Helmut. On the Dream House Raffle, I mean, thanks for providing those metrics, especially the days. So I did the quick math. And on the day metrics, the third house was on the level of the first house. I was just wondering also seeing your comments on the current house, the third house was the only one which is not a coastal house, so is that fair to assume that there's maybe also a connection there that that's the demand for these coastal retreat houses is maybe a bit higher, and that's something you're looking into for the next houses?

I think, we're still learning in terms of the appeal of the houses. The third house was different, like you said, the location was not a coastal location. It was not as much a location in a holiday area like the other houses or the fourth house. And also style-wise, architecture-wise, it was a different type of house. So all of this, I think, is contributing and influencing the performance of the houses. But I think it's also very fair to say that also the third house performed very, very strongly. But we're happy to see that the fourth house is performing even stronger. So we will continue to learn, which houses have the highest appeal and, of course, then design our house strategy accordingly.

All the best for that. And all the best to you. Thank you for your contribution.

Now we will move on with the questions from Marius Fuhrberg. So please ask your question, Marius.

First of all, also with regards to marketing, Andrea, you mentioned that you planned some investment initiatives there. Can you be a little bit more specific what that exactly means? And what kind of marketing ways you want to elaborate further? And how this should -- what we should think of this?

And secondly, also with regard to the marketing, could you provide a breakdown on how much of the marketing costs, especially in Q2 or maybe also in H1 was attributed to Traumhausverlosung and how much to lotteries?

And finally, also to mention that you still have some headroom in H2 for marketing to reach your guidance. Also considering your EBITDA, I think what we're referring to is, I think if we look at EBITDA of EUR 35 million in H1, and -- yes, if you consider -- or if you expect a normal jackpot environment, should we not at least reach the upper end, if not slightly above your EBITDA guidance range?

Thanks, Marius. So answering your questions. On the additional marketing, we can give you one very tangible idea that we are looking into. So like we said, Traumhausverlosung is very successful, fourth house is running very well. So we are looking into accelerating growth significantly. So there would be significant additional investments into performance and brand marketing focused on Traumhausverlosung.

On the lottery, on the split of the CPL or the marketing spend, we are, like we communicated already in the presentation, we separate out the core lottery brokerage business and this had a CPL of EUR 41.7 for H1. And on the EBITDA, yes, like I already said, we expect us to end up on the upper range of the guidance for sure.

And then the last person in the queue is Henry Wendisch.

Thanks for the presentation. Congrats to another good quarter. So my question is, sort of, talking on what the others have raised before. So regarding the Traumhaus maybe to put this more into perspective, The average billing is at roughly EUR 22, and we know the billings margin roughly, so the average revenue per user is roughly the same as in the classic lottery business, but the cost per lead as you mentioned before are so much higher than the classic lottery, which means or implies for profitability that Traumhaus is, of course, also in the ramp-up phase, but less profitable than the classic lottery business. Is that a fair assumption? Or am I missing something?

I think you have to calculate the customer lifetime value based on the good margins and then compare that to the acquisition cost. And then you get -- then you actually get to a very favorable looking business model or a business case.

And of course, we are still in the scaling phase. So the marketing investments also have an investment part that is building the brand, building the product category up for the market. And long term, of course, the efficiencies should improve there as well.

Yes. So it's, sort of -- this is how it looks like based on the numbers you reported thus far, that's why, I was curious of how you think this also these figures might be progressing. Maybe you also expect average revenue per user in this field to go up. But I think down the road, the cost per leads are going to go down. I mean, on the ramp-up phase, as you said before. Yes, maybe I'll go back to Frank with some more details on this.

And then, I would like to know if there are any news on the games license, so you have this site condition that you're not able to address the lottery customers thus far. Is there anything new on this side?

No. We continue to develop Games and submit Games for approval. So that is a continuous process. We expect that the process will continue to run smoother and smoother over time. We have added great games to our portfolio. Book of Ra is one of the most -- the best known, most played games in the market. We have that in our portfolio right now. And we also will add some key features on the bonus side of our Games business. So we will become more competitive in that regard. That's good news. The restrictions on cross-selling remain the same. And as you know, they are severe.

All right. Got it. And it was nice talking to you, Helmut for the years, and wish you all the best.

So in the meantime, we did not receive any further questions. So please feel invited that it's still possible. And let's wait a couple of seconds, maybe another little hand pop up, but it seems everything is discussed. And there are no further questions. So we, therefore, come to the end of today's earnings call.

Thank you, everyone, for joining in this lively conversation. So should further questions arise at a later time, please feel free to contact Frank Hoffmann from Investor Relations. And also a big thank you to you, Helmut and Andrea, for your presentation and the time you took today.

And Helmut also from my side, all the best for you. It was always a pleasure from my side. So I wish you all a lovely remaining week and hand back to Andrea for some final remarks.

Thank you once again for joining our call this morning and your continued interest in ZEAL. We appreciate that. And the special thanks to Helmut for your outstanding contribution to ZEAL's success story. And I enjoyed the years with you together a lot. And I look forward to join the next earnings call in November together with Stefan. So thanks a lot, and have a good day.

Thank you. Bye-bye.