11 PUBLIC GAMING INTERNATIONAL • NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2022 Digital Partner for Lotteries www.bedegaming.com Platform & Full Service Provider of the Year Having access to new and different investor categories was another element of the rationale. There are some investors, for example, that don’t want to own shares in a gaming business but were comfortable with investing in lotteries and Keno. It’s also allowed shareholders to value our lotteries and Keno business on a standalone basis. How did the demerger process go? I would think there are lots of challenging operational, distributional and logistical issues that a large-scale de-coupling like this must entail. Sue van der Merwe: The plan to demerge was first announced in July 2021. Within roughly 11 months, we obtained all the necessary approvals and shareholder support, along with conducting the extensive preparation for separation. It was complex and there was a lot of heavy lifting by our people. It’s a credit to all involved that we were able to meet the June 1 timetable while dealing with the impact of the pandemic and maintaining momentum in the business. Tell us about the scale of the business now. Sue van der Merwe: We’re now an ASX50 company with a market capitalisation of more than A$9.5bn at the current share price. We operate a complex multijurisdictional business across seven of the eight Australian jurisdictions, under varying forms of legal arrangements. To that end we have multiple stakeholders across the various state governments, retailer bodies, responsible gambling groups and the like. On the Lotteries side we operate a balanced portfolio of 10 popular games sold through retail and digital channels. Our lottery retail model is a franchise and accordingly we operate one of Australia’s largest franchise networks. On the Keno side, the game is distributed via licensed venues (pubs and clubs) and online in those jurisdictions where this is permitted. To give you an idea of the prominence of our brands and products, the equivalent of 46% of the adult population bought one of our products in the past 12 months. That’s 8.3 million customers, and just under half of those are registered to our database. We have around 750 employees, including a large technology team as we operate our own technology system. How is the new company going? Sue van der Merwe: We have started with momentum and we’ve just delivered a strong result in the past financial year, coming off strong performance in 2020 and 2021 when we saw increased purchase of lottery products during the onset of COVID. Our revenues grew more than 9%, and we had an increase of almost 12% in EBITDA on a comparable basis in FY22 – by comparable, we mean the reported results, which were affected by the demerger, have been “The equivalent of 46% of the adult population bought one of our products in the past 12 months. That’s 8.3 million customers, and just under half of those are registered to our database.”
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