DoubleDown's stock is shedding money as its first sales rise in eight quarters comes in.
In its Q1 financial report, social casino company DoubleDown Interactive said that its revenue had risen for the first time in eight quarters in a row.
Scout Gaming Q2: DoubleDown said that the "solid" Q1 results were due to the company's robust business strategy, noting that it often had adjusted EBITDA margins of over 30% and "significant" cash flow.
Keuk Kim, the company's CEO, said that the company was still doing well since players were still very interested in its flagship social casino game, DoubleDown Casino. As a result, the company planned to focus on increasing player monetisation. This will be done by adding new features to the whole casino.
DoubleDown Q1: DoubleDown claimed it would focus on making more money from players in the future.
Kim also hinted that the company might be moving into new areas of business in the coming year.
"We're also putting money into growing our business into new gaming categories, like igaming, through our planned purchase of SuprNation, which should close later this year," he said.
In the first quarter, DoubleDown's revenue was down compared to the same time last year.
The company's revenue for the three-month period was $77.6 million, which is 9.2% less than the $85.5 million it made in the first quarter of 2022. However, the results were better than the $76.2 million that DoubleDown posted in the fourth quarter of 2022.
The company cut its operational costs from $60.8 million in the same period last year to $52.2 million this year. DoubleDown said that this was because to lesser sales, which meant lower costs for revenue, as well as lower costs for marketing and amortisation.
A $270.0 million one-time impairment charge had a big impact on the business's performance for the year in 2022.
DoubleDown's adjusted profits before interest, taxes, depreciation, or amortisation (EBITDA) also went down a little bit, down 5.6% from the $26.9 million the company made in the previous period. On the other side, the adjusted EBITDA margin went up from 31.5% to 32.8%.
The company noted that the drop in adjusted EBITDA was because the company made less money in the preceding period, while the rise in margin was mostly because the company spent less on marketing during the same time.
Business has a lot of choices when it comes to using its resources.
The average revenue per daily active user for DoubleDown went up from $0.97 in the first quarter of 2023 to $1.03.
In the end, the business made more money throughout the course of the year. The company's net income in the first quarter of 2023 was $23.7 million, which is 28.1% more than the $18.5 million it made in the previous quarter.
In the first quarter of DoubleDown, the company signalled that it would do more mergers and acquisitions (M&A) or investments.
Kim implied that the business was in a good place to do more mergers and acquisitions or investments.
Kim remarked, "Our ongoing efforts to improve our core social casino business have put DoubleDown in a position to consistently generate attractive annual free cash flow."
"Because of this, we have a healthy balance sheet with more than $100 million in uncommitted capital. This gives the company a lot of options for how to use its resources to increase shareholder value.
"We're off to a great start this year, and we think we have the right strategy and operational plans in place to keep doing well for the rest of 2023."