Mikkel Jacobsgaard
Analyst · Danske Bank
Good morning, and welcome to Better Collective's Q2 2026 webcast. My name is Mikkel Munch Jacobsgaard, VP of Investor Relations and Communications, and I'm joined today by our Co-Founder and Co-CEO, Jesper Sogaard; and CFO, Flemming Pedersen, who will provide today's business update. Please follow me to the next page. We ask you to pay attention to this slide where we display our disclaimer regarding any forward-looking statements in today's webcast. Please turn to the next page. Here you see today's agenda. Jesper will start by providing a business update, including some of the highlights for Q2 2026. After which, Flemming will take you through the financial development before handing the word back to Jesper for concluding remarks. As always, we end the call with a Q&A session. Please turn to the next page as I hand over the word to Jesper.
Jesper Søgaard: Thanks a lot, Mikkel. Let me begin with the key developments in the second quarter. We are pleased to report another solid quarter with the growth momentum from Q1 continuing into Q2. Revenue reached EUR 89 million, corresponding to growth of 9% year-over-year, while operational earnings increased 20% to EUR 27 million. Cash generation was also strong. Cash flow before special items amounted to EUR 30 million, corresponding to cash conversion of 111%. Our FIFA World Cup activities and prediction market initiatives delivered in line with expectations and supported engagement and commercial activity during the quarter. Underlying customer activity developed strongly during the quarter, boosted by the World Cup. New depositing customers grew 24% compared with Q2 last year, while value of deposits increased 17% to all-time highs. North America was the main growth driver in the quarter, driven by the revenue share transition, talent-led media and prediction markets growth. This broad-based growth contributed to the North American EBITDA margin improving from 5% to 26%. Finally, our full year guidance remains unchanged. Overall, we are pleased with the quarter. We continued the growth momentum from Q1, reached a 30% EBITDA margin and delivered strong cash conversion while progressing on several of our strategic growth initiatives. Please turn to the next page. Turning to the FIFA World Cup. The tournament was naturally a major focus during Q2. Following more than a year of preparation across our brands, products, platforms and commercial teams, it delivered the expected boost to activity across the business. Publishing and Paid Media both benefited from strong tournament momentum. We saw higher user acquisition and reactivation, stronger engagement across our brands and solid commercial activity. That activity provides a solid foundation for the continued development of our revenue share databases. The clearest evidence is the growth in new depositing customers and value of deposits, which I'll cover on the next slide. Please turn to that page. NDCs grew by 24% year-over-year and 21% quarter-over-quarter to 373,000. The growth was supported by the FIFA World Cup and continued momentum within prediction markets. Importantly, 70% of NDCs were generated through revenue share agreements, providing a solid foundation for future revenue share growth. The mix also reflects the strong uptake in prediction markets, where partner agreements are structured on a CPA basis. At the same time, value of deposits reached an all-time high of EUR 836 million, increasing 17% year-over-year and 5% quarter-over-quarter. As a reminder, value of deposits measures the total amount deposited during the quarter by users referred under revenue share agreements. It is not a cumulative metric. Please turn to the next page. Let me now turn to another important growth driver and an area that continues to diversify our revenue base, which is talent-led media. Since acquiring Playmaker HQ in 2023, we have strengthened its talent network, commercial capabilities and content formats. During Q2, Playmaker HQ continued to make strong progress across all 3 areas. We expanded the roster of premium talent and introduced new formats, including the show, Man On, ahead of the FIFA World Cup. At the same time, Playmaker HQ continued to expand beyond digital content into high-impact live events. A standout example was the Roommate Show hosted by Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and Matt Hillman. Following the Knicks' NBA Championship victory, the show hosted a live event at the Madison Square Garden Complex, selling more than 5,000 tickets in less than 15 minutes and airing nationally on ESPN. This demonstrates the strong audience connection that talent-led media can create. It also provides commercial partners with access to highly engaged audiences across content, social media and live experiences. Playmaker HQ was a key driver alongside HLTV, of the 39% increase in group sponsorship revenue to EUR 16 million during the quarter. Please turn to the next page, where I'll dive a bit deeper into our strategic developments in improving our total advertising revenues. We have talked for some time about the opportunity to do more with a very large and highly engaged audience that we have built across Better Collective. For many years, a significant part of our focus was on building scale, strengthening our brands and deepening our audience positions. The next step is to increase the value we generate from that reach, and it's encouraging to see that strategy now becoming increasingly visible in our financial performance. At the core of this is a continued shift towards more sophisticated and higher-value monetization. We want to build deeper, more direct relationships with advertisers and partners, sell more of our inventory directly and create products that allow us to capture a greater share of the value generated by our audiences. We are already seeing this across the portfolio. Playmaker HQ continues to demonstrate the potential of a strong direct sales organization. HLTV shows what is possible when you combine a highly engaged category-leading audience with attractive sponsorship inventory. And through FanReach, we are building new capabilities to help us monetize our audiences in more targeted and scalable ways. These and many other initiatives all sit within our AdVantage framework, which brings together our efforts to systematically improve advertising monetization across the group. Naturally, as we optimize monetization, there will be some movement between CPM and sponsorship revenue. If we can replace lower-yielding programmatic revenue with higher-value direct sponsorship revenue, that is precisely the trade we want to make. And we can now see that in the numbers. In Q2, sponsorship revenue increased 39% to EUR 16 million, while CPM revenue declined 16% to EUR 6 million. Taken together, advertising revenue grew 18% year-over-year to EUR 21 million and is becoming an increasingly meaningful part of our overall revenue base. For the first half of the year, combined advertising grew -- combined advertising revenue grew 13%. Importantly, AdVantage also creates spillover opportunities for performance marketing, enabling us to bundle broader commercial partnerships and increase the value of individual deals. As this strategy develops, the distinction between sponsorship and CPM is also becoming less meaningful from a management perspective. From next year's annual report, we therefore intend to combine the 2 into a single advertising revenue line, which we believe better reflects both how we manage the business and our long-term strategy for monetizing our audiences. Please turn to the next page. Let me now turn to prediction markets, another growth opportunity that contributed positively during Q2. North American CPA revenue increased by 50% to EUR 5 million, primarily driven by strong momentum within prediction markets. As mentioned previously, prediction market partner agreements are currently structured on a CPA basis. The strong NDC development within the category therefore translates into an immediate revenue contribution. The opportunity extends beyond the current revenue. User interest remains strong, while increasing competition among prediction market operators is supporting demand for efficient distribution and high-quality customer acquisition. For Better Collective, this expands our addressable market and increases the monetization potential of the high-intent sports audiences we already reach. We continue to scale our execution across our owned media brands, social-first content, product integrations and paid media. This multichannel approach positions us to capture rising demand across the category. Prediction markets remain an emerging revenue stream. However, the development in Q2 demonstrates that the category is already contributing positively while creating an additional growth opportunity across our platform. Please turn to the next page as I hand over the word to Flemming.