G: Welcome to Listed@ASX. Today we're joined by Matt Wilson, CEO and President of Light and Wonder, a company based out of Las Vegas, Nevada in the US, but listed on ASX with a successful secondary listing in May 2023. Thanks for joining us, Matt. 

M: Yeah, great to be here. Obviously headquartered out of Las Vegas, but I'm a native of Sydney, was born here many years ago. So great to be back with you.

G: Can you tell me a little bit about Light and Wonder. What do you do? And maybe give us some highlights from your recent financial results?

M: We're a US headquartered company out of Las Vegas, and I think the best way to think about our organisation is we're a content obsessed organisation. We build great games and franchises, and we take them to these three very unique but complementary businesses.

The biggest business that we have in the portfolio is the land-based casino business. So, think of this as the pubs and clubs in Australia, the casinos in Las Vegas and all over the world. We supply both the content, the games, the technology that goes into those facilities. So that's the biggest business we have. 

The second business we have is a social casino business. Really about taking those same games and deploying them in the mobile, free to play space.

The third leg of the stool, our third business is the iGaming business, which is really a business that’s in the UK and European markets, has been for many decades, but also a hyper-growth business in the US, seven states are legal at the moment. So it's taking gambling to digital formats in both the European UK and then in the US markets is the best way to think about Light and Wonder.

Coming out of the pandemic, we chose to kind of pivot our strategy. We divested some assets, divested our lottery and sports business, and really refocused the business back around content and around these core markets that I mentioned. 

A big part of our strategy was to contemplate a secondary listing on the ASX. The Australian Stock Exchange has been a market where many gaming companies have had a lot of success over the years, and a lot of investors have had a lot of success investing in the sector.

With the pivot back to this core fundamental strategy, we had a lot of investors in Australia reach out to us and say we're interested in ways to invest in your organisation. Is there a chance for you to list on the ASX as a secondary exchange to give [us] access? So, we thought about it for some time, and we did that in May of last year.

I think in my tenure as CEO of Light and Wonder for the last two years, it's been one of the biggest drivers about shareholder value in that period of time. So, it's been very successful and we're glad we did it.

"A big part of our strategy was to contemplate a secondary listing on the ASX. The Australian Stock Exchange has been a market where many gaming companies have had a lot of success over the years, and a lot of investors have had a lot of success investing in the sector."

G: Fantastic. And I can say that you're already in the S&P ASX 200. It's great to hear that it was a real pull factor to come to our market. So just moving on to your business,

the Australian gaming business is doing really well. Can you give us a little bit of insight around that and what's coming next?

M: Yeah, it's been an amazing transformation the Australian business. We were here in August of last year meeting with investors and talking about the potential for the Australian business.

We've been a historically 7 to 10% share player in the Australian market for the last, say, 20 years. We've put some investment down here, we've invested in talent, in the teams and we've gone to number one.

So I'm really proud to say this year, through the first half of the year, we are 45% market share, which puts us in the leading market position in Australia. Really just a microcosm of what we've been able to achieve across the globe, really investing to grow all parts of our business. Yeah, really proud of what we've achieved in Australia.

G: Just moving on then to your strategy and culture, can you talk a little bit about that and in particular, responsible gaming.

M: We’ve put together an amazing team, of leaders and businesses across the globe. Our strategy is really focused and clear. It’s around building great games and taking them across these three channels. Responsible gaming is a key feature of our strategy.

This is a transformation beyond just financials and strategy really about, you know, transforming every part of our business.

We have a key focus on CSR. Proud to say we just launched our second annual CSR report, which details out all of the programs at work. But responsible gaming is a key foundational pillar of that, making sure we're building products in a sustainable way.

We want the industry to be around in perpetuity and be healthy and successful. So, making sure we sign up for all the protocols in the different regional markets that we're in, is really important. It's a highly regulated market and so we think that's an important feature of the gaming sector.

We want to make sure that it's regulated and here to stay. It’s a key foundational pillar of our transformation.

G: Fantastic. I'm going to ask you now to talk a little bit about your growth plans. I see you've got an FY25 earnings target. Are you on track to meet that? And what's really driving it?

M: This is a key foundational pillar of our transformation strategy. When we came out,

rebranded to Light and Wonder, we wanted to give investors something to anchor our ambitions around. So, in May of 2022, we came out with an investor day target to 2025,

a guide of $1.4 billion in our EBITDA. The businesses had just come off a year where they produced $913 million in EBITDA. So, it required a 15% compound average rate of return to get to that 2025 guide. 

It looked very ambitious to the market at that point in time, but really proud to say that we're right on track to deliver on that. If you think about our financial year 23 results, we had a 22% EBITDA growth rate for that year. We just announced our second quarter earnings here a week ago. We were 17%. So, if you think about it through kind of an Australian cricketing parlance, the run rate required to get to that guide is now 11%.

So we're squarely on track to that. And just really exciting that what seemed like an ambitious set of targets, just a few years ago, is now squarely within our sights. I think it speaks to the composition of the businesses that we've put together.

We've put it together in a way that's going to grow in perpetuity. So that's exciting. These are growing businesses across growing segments. It’s exciting to not only see the 2025 guide in our sights, but also growth beyond that, which is a great place to be.

G: Fantastic. I'm sure investors will be really pleased to see you deliver on what you've promised. It's such a key factor of market life. Really just to finish up then, what is your proposition for Australian investors?

M: I think we're a unique proposition for Australian investors. We're an organisation that you can invest in here locally on the ASX on your local exchange, and it'll give you access to global TAMs, global technology. We’re a business that’s listed in the US and headquartered in the US, but we have a global focus. We’re growing fast.

So, I think it's unique in the construct of the ASX opportunities. It's global, it's growth, it's international TAMs, it’s technology. I think it's an exciting proposition. 

G: Great. Matt, thanks for coming in today. It was great to have you on Listed@ASX.