Codere Online has reported today 20 February, for the year ended 31 December, a total net gaming revenue of €211.6 million ($221.4 million/£175.2 million), up 23% year-on-year. The operator posted an adjusted EBITDA of €6.4 million, up 18.1% year-on-year.
The company saw its average monthly active players increase by 13% in the 12 month period to 144,900.
For the group’s core Spanish market, it posted a revenue of €87.7 million, up 16% year-on-year. Average monthly active players in Spain grew by 17% to 49,700.
Competitors in Mexico not seeing same success
For the full-year, Codere Online’s Mexico revenue was €106.6 million, up 30% year-on-year.
The market’s performance was impacted by flat Q4 revenue of €25.1 million. Codere Online CEO Aviv Sher noted that this was “driven by the significant devaluation of the Mexican peso.”
On a constant currency basis, the company’s growth in Mexico would have been 14% during the quarter.
Speaking to analysts during the group’s earnings call, CEO Sher said: “I don’t know why, but I think some of the competitors have slowed down their investment a little bit in the fourth quarter, and we are enjoying it.”
“I think some of the competitors, let’s call them the European competitors that came in, I think at the moment did not succeed as well as they thought.
“Probably they saw success in other markets in LatAm and I think right now they lost a little bit of focus into this Mexico market a little bit.”
Sher noted that as the the World Cup is coming up next year he believes that many of the group’s competitors will come back and try to penetrate the market again.
He continued to add that the group had solved some “technical problems” in the way it invested its marketing money, which had also helped its Mexican growth.
Argentina expansion hindered by regional licensing system
In terms of other markets, the operator has struggled to penetrate the online gambling market in Argentina. Sher told analysts although the group has some foothold there in Buenos Aires, it does not have the necessary licences to operate across the different provinces.
“We made a lot of efforts,” Sher said, “[but] we are not able, at the moment, to enter to the province of Argentina where the majority of the money in the country is coming from and we are not able to grow our business there based only on the city.”
As it only has access to one region currently, Codere Online is hopeful that in the coming years local operators will be willing to sell their licence to expand its access to other provinces.
Why Codere Online isn’t investing in new markets right now
Commenting on further expansion in LatAm, Codere CEO Sher stated: “The problem that we are facing right now is if I want to increase my marketing spend, our next dollar, in terms of ROI, should go into Mexico and Spain. Because we know how to spend it, and we know the ROI on it.”
He said “it doesn’t make sense” for the group to invest money into markets like Chile or Peru as it still has room to grow within its core markets.
“The amount of money that, let’s say, is available for us to penetrate a new market is not enough to turn a new market into a significant market,” CEO Sher said.
Codere Online was threatened with a delisting from the Nasdaq stock market after it failed to file its 20-F form last November. But it was granted an extension to submit the filing on 12 February following an appeal with Nasdaq. The extension of its listing is subject to the company filing its 2023 annual report on or before 12 May 2025.
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/finance/full-year-results/codere-online-posts-2024-growth-struggles-with-argentina-penetration/
