Half-year Results

Guild Esports, (LSE: GILD), a global teams organisation and lifestyle brand, is pleased to announce its unaudited financial results for the six months ended 31 March 2024.

Financial highlights

Commenting on the results, Jasmine Skee, Chief Executive Officer, said: "Guild has done well to weather a tricky macroeconomic environment and the rise in Guild Studios' revenues is highly promising. We are pleased with our progress in strengthening Guild Esports' financial health and expanding our global footprint. Our focus remains on executing the Company's existing commercial strategy and positioning it for long-term growth.

"Our partnerships, such as with Subway UK and Sky Broadband, along with our new initiatives in the Esports World Cup Program, underscore our commitment to innovation and industry leadership. We are cautiously optimistic that our efforts will continue to drive growth and success as we navigate through the remainder of 2024 and beyond."

Guild has continued on its path toward profitability into 2024. The Company reduced its loss before tax by 21% to £1.8m, down from £2.28m in H1 2023. Guild's continuation of its effective cost-rationalisation programme reduced administrative expenses by 38% year-on-year to £2.64m (H1 2023: £4.28m).

Guild's first-half revenues fell to £2.1m and gross profit to £1.39m reflecting a challenging macroeconomic environment and global reduction in marketing budgets, pressuring sponsorship revenues. Marketing budgets have fallen to an average of 7.7% of company revenue in 2024, down from an average of 11% in the previous four years (source: Gartner, 2024).

Guild's H1 2023 revenues were increased by a significant, one-off tournament prize of $1 million (£784k). The Company only keeps a small proportion of prize money won by its professional players, in line with industry standards. In H1 2023, approximately 85% of prize money was returned to players. The reduction in tournament winnings from £1.06m in H1 2023 to £0.27m in H1 2024 therefore only had a modest effect on gross profit.

Net cash amounted to £17k as at 31 March 2024, compared to £1.05m on the same date in the previous year. In the post-period, Guild's net cash rose to £110k as at 25 June 2024.

The Company continues to review its contracted revenue, pipeline, cash balances and committed expenditure. Based on the directors' assessment of the Company's cash needs and the availability of financing the directors consider the Company to be a going concern. Negotiations to secure additional funding are well progressed and the Directors are confident in Company's ability to close negotiations swiftly. Management have modelled that this additional funding will be sufficient in covering the Company's working capital requirements, therefore the Directors have concluded that the adoption of the going concern assumption is appropriate. However, this does constitute a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt on the company's ability to continue as a going concern.

Operating review

Guild adapted its revenue-generation strategies under CEO Jasmine Skee, with the intention of reducing the proportion that sponsorship and tournament winnings comprise of its revenue mix. Guild Studios, Guild's production and creative division launched in February 2023, is a success story of this strategy. Guild Studios achieved £586k in revenue in H1 2024, an increase of 537% year-on-year.

Guild Studios allows the Company to monetise its in-house experience in esports and gaming to support brand owners on individual campaigns, with the specific goal of attracting brands not traditionally associated with gaming and esports.

In December 2023, Guild Studios was named Sky Broadband's Official Activation Partner for their 2024 Gaming Plan, granting Guild Studios an exclusive mandate to deliver a suite of activation services in the first half of 2024. In the post-period, this included a first-of-its-kind women's esports initiative, where the Company and Sky Broadband launched a series of tournaments to encourage increased female participation in sim racing and football esports. To date, Guild Studios has generated total revenues of £1.38m.

Guild further diversified its revenues through the opening of the Guild Simulator Facility in November 2023. In addition to the simulator facility serving as a training centre for Guild's professional sim racing pilots, the cutting-edge simulators provide an additional revenue stream to the Company via experiential sim racing packages available for corporates, the wider public and the esports community.

In October, Guild successfully raised £500k from strategic investor 00Nation AS ("00Nation"), a crossover brand that combines music, fashion, sports, and gaming, and is listed on the Norwegian OTC Market. Guild raised a further £250k from investment company Compassare Holdings in the post-period as part of a convertible loan agreement.

Guild's partnership with 00Nation aimed to drive Guild's strategic integration of its brand and services deeper into the industry ecosystem and support its international expansion efforts. These international expansion plans primarily targeted the MENA region, the world's fastest-growing gaming market, where the number of gamers reached 68.4 million in 2023 (source: Niko Partners, 2024).

Guild's immediate focus for MENA is to compete at the Esports World Cup (EWC) in Riyadh in July and August 2024. The EWC is expected to be the largest esports tournament in history. It will bring together more than 30 esports clubs to compete across 22 game titles, for a share of a $20 million team prize pool.

Guild made notable progress toward this end in the post-period, when the Company was invited to join the Esports World Cup Program, a scheme launched by the Esports World Cup Foundation ("EWC Foundation") to incentivise leading esports organisations to expand their competitive presence at the EWC. Guild is a partner team of the EWC and the Company has qualified for four events so far at the tournament: Apex Legends, Call of Duty: Warzone, ESL R1 and Street Fighter.

In addition to its participation at the EWC, Guild is continuing to evaluate how to utilise its Guild College and Academy to effectively monetise the growing MENA audience. The Board sees excellent growth potential in providing a clear path-to-pro, similar to an association football academy system, to young gamers in the MENA region. This is of keen interest to Guild's co-owner, David Beckham, following his own positive experience of the Manchester United academy system.

Sponsorship

The Company signed two sponsorship partners in the half year, returning Subway to the front of Guild's professional jerseys as Guild's Official Quick-Service Restaurant Partner in a six-figure deal. As well as front-of-shirt branding on Guild's professional players' jerseys, the partnership grants Subway shirt sponsorship rights to Guild's Academy players' shirts.

In addition, Guild signed a one-year rolling partnership with eNDX in December, an esports player-focused virtual trading platform, to add players from the Company's Counter-Strike rosters into eNDX's tradable pool. The partnership is estimated to be worth up to six figures based on projected user acquisition and trading volume. Guild's players have been temporarily removed from the platform while Guild evaluates the signing of a new Counter-Strike team.

Audience

Guild's audience stands at approximately 2.7 million. There has been a modest reduction in Guild's network audience since January as the Company parted ways with Counter-Strike team the Guild Eagles.

However, the Company has seen positive momentum in its audience numbers in 2024 and expect these positive trends to continue. Guild has gained 37k new followers to its owned social media channels since January 2024. Audience engagement has continued to increase from 2023; the Company has received 93 million video views in the 2024 calendar year so far, compared with 105m in total for the 2023 calendar year. The Company additionally receives an average engagement of 52k across social media each day.

Esports

During the year, Guild's professional players have continued to compete at the upper echelons of professional esports. Performance highlights include Guild Fortnite player 'Chico' winning $200,000 after finishing third in the prestigious Fortnite Champion Series Grand Final in October 2023.

In H1 2024, Guild adapted its esports strategy to take a more flexible approach to entering and exiting different esports. Every game title Guild competes across must deliver a commercial return and value for investors, whether this is through tournament winnings, sponsorship sales or activation opportunities with existing partners. Guild does not have prestige titles, where the Company fields professional rosters simply for appearance or reputation and Guild does not retain underperforming players.

Throughout H1 2023 Guild prioritised developing emerging talent using Guild's world-class coaches and Academy rather than signing the world's best players. Players trained in the Guild Academy system have considerably lower wage requirements, allowing Guild to maintain a larger professional roster. This approach additionally offers a revenue-generation opportunity, as players trained through the Academy system can be sold on to other esports organisations for profit.

Currently, Guild fields professional rosters across eight esports, which are:

Guild entered Tekken for the first time in May 2024, Call of Duty: Warzone in June 2024 and returned to Apex Legends in June 2024 having last fielded a professional team in June 2022. The Company additionally expanded its sim racing presence by entering ESL R1, a high-profile sim racing championship.

The Company cut ties with the 'Guild Eagles' Counter-Strike team in the post-period and is in the process of searching for a new Counter-Strike team. In addition, Guild has longstanding interest in a number of games including Rocket League and VALORANT and looks forward to returning to these titles when a commercially viable opportunity arises.

Outlook

The Company continues to trade in line with management expectations, and the 38% reduction in administrative costs puts Guild on track to achieve a substantial reduction in cash burn for the full year. Guild's strategy to diversify its revenues is showing positive momentum, led by an increase in revenues from Guild Studios, and the Company's international expansion is showing promise. As such, the Board is cautiously optimistic for the remainder of 2024.

CONDENSED STATEMENT OF COMPREHENSIVE INCOME

The unaudited condensed statement of comprehensive income of the Company for the six months ended 31 March 2024 is set out below.

CONDENSED STATEMENT OF FINANCIAL POSITION

The unaudited condensed statement of financial position of the Company as at 31 March 2024 is set out below.

CONDENSED STATEMENT OF CHANGES IN EQUITY

The unaudited condensed statement of changes in equity of the Company for the six months ended 31 March 2024 is set out below

CONDENSED STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS

The unaudited condensed statement of cash flows of the Company for the six months ended 31 March 2024 is set out below.

NOTES TO THE CONDENSED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS

FOR THE SIX MONTHS ENDED 31 MARCH 2024

1 Accounting policies

1.1 Basis of preparation

The condensed interim financial statements ("interim financial statements") have been prepared in accordance with International Accounting Standard 34 "Interim Financial Reporting" (IAS 34) as adopted by the European Union (EU). The interim financial statements have been prepared on the historical cost basis, except for assets and liabilities measured at fair value through profit and loss, and are presented in pounds sterling, which is the currency of the primary economic environment in which the Company operates. All amounts have been rounded to the nearest £'000, unless otherwise stated. The financial information contained in the interim financial statements is unaudited and does not constitute statutory accounts within the meaning of section 434 of the Companies Act 2006. The accounting policies are unchanged from those disclosed in the previously filed audited financial statements for the period ended 30 September 2023.

The interim financial statements are for the six months to 31 March 2024, being six months from the financial year end for Guild Esports Plc ("Guild" or "the Company"), 30 September 2023. The interim financial information does not include all the information and disclosures required in the annual financial statements and should be read in conjunction with the Company's annual audited financial statements for the period ended 30 September 2023. The Company has disclosed comparative data for the statement of comprehensive income for the Company for the period from 1 October 2022 to 31 March 2023, being not materially different from comparative data for the six months ended 31 March 2024.

The Company has adopted the applicable amendments to standards effective for accounting periods commencing on 1 October 2023. The nature and effect of these changes as a result of the adoption of these amended standards did not have an impact on the financial statements of the Company and hence have not been disclosed. The Company has not early adopted any standards, interpretations or amendments that have been issued but are not yet effective.

The condensed interim financial statements have not been audited, nor have they been reviewed by the Company's auditors in accordance with the International Standard on Review Engagements 2410 issued by the Auditing Practices Board. The figures have been prepared using applicable accounting policies and practices consistent with those adopted in the audited annual financial statements for the year ended 30 September 2023.

1.2 Going concern

The preparation of financial statements requires an assessment on the validity of the going concern assumption. The interim financial statements have been prepared on a going concern basis, which assumes that the Company will continue to meet its liabilities as they fall due. In assessing whether the going concern assumption is appropriate, the Directors have taken into account all relevant available information about the current and future position of the Company. Negotiations to secure additional funding are well progressed and the Directors are confident in Company's ability to close negotiations swiftly. Management have modelled that this additional funding will be sufficient in covering the Company's working capital requirements, therefore the Directors have concluded that the adoption of the going concern assumption is appropriate. However, this does constitute a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt on the company's ability to continue as a going concern.

2 Critical accounting judgements and key sources of estimation uncertainty

The preparation of the financial statements requires management to make estimates and judgements and form assumptions that affects the reported amounts of the assets, liabilities, revenue and costs during the periods presented therein, and the disclosure of contingent liabilities at the date of the financial information. Estimates and judgements are continually evaluated and based on management's historical experience and other factors, including future expectations and events that are believed to be reasonable.

During the period, the Company issued warrants. The directors have applied the Black‐Scholes pricing model to assess the costs associated with the share‐based payments. The Black‐Scholes model is dependent upon several inputs where the directors must exercise their judgement, specifically: risk‐free investment rate; expected share price volatility at the time of the grant; and expected level of redemption. The assumptions applied by the directors, and the associated costs recognised in the financial statements are outlined in these financial statements.

3 Revenue

The Company derives revenue from various sources, including revenue from contracts with customers. These revenue sources involve the transfer of goods and/or services over time and at a point in time in the following major product lines.

5 Employees

The average monthly number of persons (excluding directors) employed by the Company during the period was 32 (2022: 45).

The Company had in issue 115,074,395 warrants and options at 31 March 2024 (77,595,228 at 31 March 2023). The loss attributable to equity holders and weighted average number of ordinary shares for the purposes of calculating diluted earnings per ordinary share are identical to those used for basic earnings per ordinary share. This is because the exercise of warrants and options would have the effect of reducing the loss per ordinary share and is therefore anti-dilutive.

7 Trade and other receivables

9 Share-based payments

The following options and warrants over ordinary shares have been granted by the Company and are outstanding:

At the grant date, the fair value of the warrants issued have been determined using the Black-Scholes option pricing model. Volatility was calculated based on data from comparable esports companies, with an appropriate discount applied due to being an unlisted entity at the grant date, if applicable. Risk-free interest has been based on UK Government Gilt rates.

10 Share capital and share premium

116,000,000 shares were issued in the period from the Company's last annual report on 30 September 2023 to 31 March 2024.