Earnings Transcript for SKLZ - Q2 Fiscal Year 2023

Operator: Hello and welcome to today's Skillz Inc. 2023 Second Quarter Results Call. My name is Bailey and I'll be your moderator for today. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to pass the conference over to Jim Leahy, Investor Relations for Skillz Inc. Please go ahead.

James Leahy: Good afternoon and welcome to the Skillz second quarter earnings conference call. On the call today are Andrew Paradise, Skillz Co-Founder and CEO; Casey Chafkin, Co-Founder and CSO [ph]; and Jason Roswig, President and CFO. This afternoon, Skillz issued its 2023 second quarter results release which is available on the company's Investor Relations website. Before I turn the call over to Andrew, please note that some of the management's comments today will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements which are usually identified by the use of words such as will, expect, should or other similar phrases are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. Therefore, you should exercise caution in interpreting and relying on them. We refer you to the company's SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact future operating results and financial condition. During the call, management will discuss non-GAAP measures which it believes can be useful in evaluating the company's operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in the company's second quarter 2023 earnings release. With that, I'll turn the call over to Andrew for some opening remarks, followed by Jason for a discussion of our financial performance before we open the call for questions. Andrew?

Andrew Paradise: Thank you for the introduction and good afternoon to everyone. Throughout the second quarter, we made further progress on the 4 strategic pillars we laid out last year that we expect will position Skillz to deliver consistent top line growth and positive cash flow. As a reminder, these 4 pillars are

Jason Roswig: Thanks, Andrew. Revenue in the second quarter was $40.2 million, down 24% year-over-year and down 10% sequentially. Our payer conversion rate which is paying MAU, divided by MAU was 18% in the quarter which compares favorably to 17% in Q1. Second quarter UA marketing was $7.8 million, a decrease of 74% year-over-year, a 6% decrease quarter-over-quarter. As Andrew indicated, we are confident in our ability to continue to improve our payback period with the goal of achieving best-in-class 6-month target. Q2 engaged marketing was $17.1 million, down 45% year-over-year and down 3% quarter-over-quarter. Research and development was $8.9 million in the quarter, down 51% year-over-year. On a GAAP basis, R&D was 22% of quarterly revenue. Sales and marketing was $33.1 million, down 55% year-over-year, including $2.5 million of stock-based compensation. On a GAAP basis, sales and marketing was 82% of Q2 revenue, down 2,100 basis points year-over-year and up 350 basis points quarter-over-quarter. General and administrative expense was $30.1 million inclusive of $11.6 million in stock-based compensation, up 12% year-over-year. On a GAAP basis, G&A was 75% of revenue, up 1,200 basis points year-over-year. On a quarterly sequential basis, G&A was up 1,200 basis points as a percent of revenue. Net loss of $21.9 million decreased by $40.6 million year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter was negative $20.2 million, a 42% year-over-year improvement and an improvement of 3% quarter-over-quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margin of negative 50% improved 600 basis points year-over-year and decreased 700 basis points quarter-over-quarter. We ended the second quarter with $361 million of cash, comprising $328 million cash and cash equivalents and $33 million of marketable securities. Following our repurchase in April of approximately $160 million of outstanding debt, we ended the quarter with approximately $130 million of total outstanding debt. In addition to driving a nearly $60 million benefit over the next 50 years, when we repurchased the debt, we also received consensus to an amendment of the venture that increased the general restricted payments basket by $40 million from $25 million to $65 million. This provides us contractive liquidity which allows management and the Board to immediately evaluate opportunities to deploy capital to enhance shareholder value. At this time, we'll turn the call to the operator for the Q&A session.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from the line of Jason Tilchen from Canaccord.

Jason Tilchen: Great. Maybe to start, how do you view the current competitive landscape for developer talent? And how has the introduction of those new developer terms several months ago impacted your relationship with developers helped attract that new talent so far?

Andrew Paradise: Jason, thanks for the question. This is Andrew. I think it'd probably be best if we had Casey comment a bit on our overall strategy of how we're working against our competitors in our space.

Casey Chafkin: Thank you Andrew and thank you, Jason, for the question. Jason, I think broadly, it's important to remember that Skillz is essentially the only platform in this skill gaming or casual e-sports business. And when you look at the gaming sector as a whole, in the early days of any new category or sector, being a fast follower is a relatively lucrative strategy. And that's because of the cost to replicate the best games is low, the time to market is fast. And you can see this historically with businesses like Zynga. They used the strategy to enter Facebook Gaming, kind of in the 2008-ish timeframe and Stormy, we've subsequently followed them using this to enter the mobile gaming sector. What you see is that the economic opportunity of any of these new categories is proven out, as it was in Facebook, as it was in mobile and now as it's being proven out in casual e-sports, content creators will increase their level of investment into more intricate and complex play experiences to match the size of the economic opportunity they have in front of them. And so as the games become more complex, the ability to fast follow, AKA really copy is reduced. And that's not just because of the direct expenses that come from development but it's also because of the time to market and because the nuances of what make a game great aren't always overly visible and that makes copying difficult to or even unpredictable. And so what you see is increased complexity of skill games or what we see happening is that the increased complexity of skill-based games or casual e-sports is inevitable as the industry grows. The play experiences will become more robust, the investment that goes into building them will become greater. And as that happens, we -- what we see happening is platforms winning out over individual vertically integrated competitors, because the source of the next hit becomes increasingly diverse and unpredictable. So we don't know necessarily which studio is going to build the next great game but you see investment increasing which increases the likelihood of those really big hits. And so for Skillz is the only platform for skill-based games, we -- or casual e-sports, we are ostensibly the fastest, easiest, most reliable way for developers to get their products to market in this emerging category or industry. And that makes Skillz the most likely place for the next team to emerge. And so just as Andrew was saying and you correctly bring up the changes that we made, those really lean into our competitive advantage of encouraging and empowering developers to create the competitive experiences that don't exist anywhere else. And I think while -- well, maybe I'll let Andrew talk about kind of how the creators have received some of the changes.

Andrew Paradise: Yes. Thanks, Casey. We've received initial positive feedback from the entire developer community and have really -- so we've moved every developer now over to the new model which is no small feat, reengineering the rev share in our partnership with the developers as a premature platform and getting all of our developers moved over to this traffic-based approach which frankly, makes more sense for both, the developers and for Skillz platform, because we want to align all parties on creating network effect that, in turn, benefits all parties on the platform and accelerates the benefits for each new developer who would look to join. So we've made that happen. We've had positive feedback from our existing developers. In fact, multiple of our existing developers who may have been on pause on further investment into the platform, have actually started investing again in building new content. It's also led to second to several developers that had considered using Skillz to go to market in the past but they are now actually putting their games on the service. And then I'd say third, we've been getting a growing amount of very positive feedback in one-on-one discussions at developer conferences. So I think in general, the feedback is that the new model is a lot better, it's easier to understand and it has rewards for developers in performing games which I think every one of our customers wants.

Jason Tilchen: Great. That was really helpful. One other question. Maybe you could just share a little bit more about the types of releases, we can maybe expect in that product pipeline. You talked about how you sort of see visibility for 18 months, is there anything else you can share that was -- what we could maybe expect on that front?

Andrew Paradise: Yes. And thanks for asking about that, because probably the most encouraging thing that happened for me personally in the quarter is that we've started to release midsized features again. And make meaningful changes to retention, engagement and monetization. And we really entered turned around this business about a year ago. That just wasn't the case. We haven't put out a meaningful product in over 18 months. So we really came to a standstill on the development phase, as well as the testing phase and rollout. So where we are and some of the things that we can talk about from Q2, we launched daily challenges and we're doing a full rollout in this quarter and in Q3. That is seeing double-digit improvements in our core metrics of retention, engagement and monetization. We have key experience changes for the player coming in the back half of this year. So one of the things they call out is overhauling our league system as a genuine platform, you'd expect us to have really great leagues. We built a league technology that hasn't seen an overhaul in quite some time. The new leagues will, I'd say, really deliver a more meaningful experience for every player at every level. And we think we -- it's too early to comment yet on the metrics there and what we'll see. But we do believe that, that can result in a double-digit improvement in these core metrics of retention, engagement and monetization. We launched actually pretty excitingly end-to-end, we were able to release a feature in under 5 weeks which is much more like the old Skillz before we've gone to all the situation with the leasing product and that features instant match. And what that is, is being able to pop a -- basically a tile for a user as they're playing and that says if -- that gives them an opportunity to participate in a real-time match or potentially a slight upsell to their existing play behavior. That feature is already live in testing on the platform. And then I believe we'll see roll out in Q3. We've overhauled chat but that's in testing and not rolled. So that will be in the back half of this year. And also introducing probably long overdue for a platform but getting a single sign on up and really making that a reality for all the players in the platform. So maybe to recap that, because it's quite a few things but progressively, instant matching, chat and single sign-on, with daily challenges launched in Q2 and enrolled in Q3.

Operator: Thank you. There are no additional questions waiting at this time. So I'll pass the conference over to Andrew Paradise for any closing remarks.

Andrew Paradise: All right. Well, thank you all again for joining us today. We look forward to providing updates throughout the year in our progress as we return the company to sustain a profitable growth, including when to report on our third quarter results in November. I really appreciate the time and everyone's patience as we complete this turnaround. And I feel confident that we can achieve many, many great things for the competition platform forward together.

Operator: This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.