Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Allied Esports Entertainment Second Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. I would now like to turn the conference over to Lasse Glassen, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Allied Esports Entertainment's 2021 second quarter results conference call. Speaking on the call today is Allied Esports Entertainment's Chief Executive Officer, Claire Wu; and Chief Financial Officer, Tony Hung. Jud Hannigan, who is leading the Allied Esports Operations is also available for the question-and-answer session. Before I turn the call over to management, please remember that our prepared remarks and responses to questions may contain forward-looking statements. Words such as may, will, expect, intend, plan, believe, seek, could, estimate, judgment, targeting, should, anticipate, goal and variations of these words and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those implied by such forward-looking statements, due to a variety of factors discussed in the Company's public filings, including the risk factors discussed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Although the Company believes the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurances that the expectations will be attained. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. In addition, certain of the financial information presented in this call represents non-GAAP financial measures. The Company's earnings release, which was issued this afternoon and is available on the Company's website presents definitions of such non-GAAP financial measures, reconciliations to the appropriate GAAP measure and an explanation of why the Company believes such non-GAAP financial measures are useful to investors. With that, it's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Allied Esports Entertainment's CEO, Claire Wu. Claire?

Thank you, Lasse, and thank you, everyone for joining us this afternoon. I will begin by discussing the recent leadership transition at AESE, and then an overview of the key operating highlights from this past quarter. In addition, I will provide an update on the company's strategies as our Board of Directors and the management team evaluate the future exciting path. Tony Hung our Chief Financial Officer will follow with additional details on our second quarter financial performance. Similar to recent quarters, the financials we are reporting today pertain to our continuing operations, which includes our Allied Esports operations under the corporate TopCo expenses. As previously announced, we completed the sale of the World Poker Tour or WPT to Element Partners earlier in the third quarter, and therefore the WPT results are presented as discontinued operations for the three and a six month period ended June 30, as well as the comparable periods for the prior year. Having been appointed to the role of CEO, President and General Counsel of AESE just about five weeks ago, I'm very honored to lead the day to day operations of the company. For those of you who are not familiar with my background, I believe more than 15-years of relevant experience to AESE. Most of this is may as Vice President, and the General Counsel for Asia Pacific Capital, Inc., as well as Senior Counsel at the New York law firm Davidoff Hutcher & Citron. In addition, prior to accepting the CEO, President and the General Counsel positions, I served and will continue to serve as the Director of AESE Board. Throughout my career, I have had extensive legal and business experience in cross-border transactions, U.S. securities regulations, mergers and acquisitions, capital market transactions as well as corporate strategic planning and restructuring. I…

Thank you, Claire. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. While the pandemic continues to impact our business in the second quarter, we saw the beginning of recovery as cautionary restrictions were lifted in June in Las Vegas, and economies across the country began to reopen. Demand for our tournament and production services also increased and Allied Esports experienced meaningful improvements this quarter. In addition, we've continued to make progress on the development of our Multiplatform Content pillar and announced a new division of the company AE Studios during the quarter. Momentum is building and Allied Esports is well-positioned to continue driving improved results in the second-half of the year. Now, let's turn to our second quarter results from continuing operations. Total revenues for the second quarter increased 32.9% to $0.8 million compared to the second quarter of 2020. Looking at these results in greater detail, in-person revenues for the second quarter increased 8.1% to $0.7 million, compared to $0.6 million in the second quarter of 2020. As a result of the increased number of events, and loosened restrictions of operating hours and social distancing measures at our HyperX Esports Arena Las Vegas. The increase in in-person revenues were partially offset by a decrease in sponsorship revenue due to a lack of in-person activation and truck events in Europe, where the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic remain a concern. Our Multiplatform Content pillar generated $0.2 million in revenues for the second quarter, driven by our new tournament organization partnership with Trovo, the Tencent backed streaming platform. Total costs and expenses for the second quarter were $5.0 million down from $5.3 million compared to the prior year period. The year-over-year decrease was primarily the result of the one-time impairment charge of $1.1 million against our investment in…

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. The first question comes from Derek Soderberg with Colliers Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Ryan on for Derek, thank you for taking my questions. I wonder if you can provide some more detail on the M&A environment out there and how you're prioritizing using the cash. Business environment favorable at the moment to find growing and profitable companies at a reasonable price. Can you maybe describe your ideal target? And is the company in real money gaming, content producing or any more detail on that would be great?

Hi, Derek. Thank you for the question. Yes, with 100 million cash from the WPT deal, we intend to explore many M&A opportunities with this business. And like you mentioned that includes business in online entertainment, real money gaming, and other gaming sectors. With that being said, apparently the company does not plan to limit itself to any particular industry or location in its efforts to identify possible potential business. And Tony, do you have anything to add to that topic?

Yeah. No, Ryan, I think, as you've probably been following the market obviously has been pretty active for M&A, and I think that's something that we're watching very carefully. And as Claire described, I think the good thing is that we have a pretty broad mandate in terms of looking at M&A activities. So we're not kind of boxed in to have to do a particular deal under a particular timeframe, and then have to do it under poor economic deal terms. So I think that gives us a lot more flexibility to be able to find the right deal that's going to maximize shareholder value.

Yeah. Thank you. And as a follow-up, I'm wondering if you could help us understand your expectations for what cash burn are, and where we should be modeling OpEx for the rest of the year? Thank you.

Hey, Claire do you want me to go ahead with that?

Regarding the – I can answer first and then I’m going to turn to you for details. Regarding the cash burn of Esports business, currently our strategy will be continue to grow revenues, while at the same time to reduce expense and become a more efficient company. In terms of a revenue growth, this is the in-person revenue bumping back. And we are very excited about the growth of our Multiplatform Content pillar. As far as the improve efficiency side, as the new CEO of the company, I'm leading the team to take a fresh look at all costs and expense, as well as the elements of our business of which are most profitable. And now, let me turn this to Tony to add more details.

Yeah. And Ryan, I guess, just to kind of follow-up on what Claire said, I would say for the short-term, as you've kind of seen from our earnings release, probably, historically, we've been burning somewhere around $800,000 to a $1 million a month between the kind of Esports business as well as our corporate TopCo expenses. And so for the short-term going forward, I would expect that to be kind of a nice placeholder. But as Claire mentioned, obviously, we're going to be looking at new revenue opportunities, and also, potential ways to have identify more operational efficiencies to kind of help bring that down over time.

Thank you very much.

Sure.

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Thank you for your support and for joining us on today's call. We look forward to speaking with you again, when we report our 2021 third quarter in November. Thank you again for your time and attention this afternoon. And please stay safe and healthy.

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.