East Side Games Group Q3 2025 Earnings Report

East Side Games Group EPS Results

• Actual EPS: -C$0.08
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

East Side Games Group Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $20.05 million
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

East Side Games Group Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q3 2025
• Date: 11/13/2025
• Time: After Market Closes
• Conference Call Date: Friday, November 14, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 5:00PM ET

East Side Games Group (TSE:EAGR) Inc is a free-to-play mobile game group, that creates engaging games that produce enduring player loyalty. Its studio group entrepreneurial culture is anchored in creativity, execution, and growth through a diverse portfolio of original and licensed IP mobile games that include Archer: Danger Phone, Bud Farm Idle Tycoon, Cheech & Chong Bud Farm, The Goldbergs: Back to the 80s, It's Always Sunny: The Gang Goes Mobile; Trailer Park Boys Greasy Money, and many more. It generates revenue through in-app purchases (IAP) from the sale of in-game virtual items that enhance the gameplaying experience, and through in-game advertising.

East Side Games Group Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Launched two match-3 titles (RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen and Squishmallows Match), with match now contributing ~22% of revenue; management says Q3 was a deliberate peak in marketing spend (≈60% of marketing) to scale these games and expects payback and sustained cash flow within two-to-three quarters.
• Negative Sentiment: Profitability and cash were pressured by the launch investments—adjusted EBITDA was negative CAD 3.0M in Q3 (YTD negative CAD 0.6M) versus prior-year profitability, and the company expects to tap its credit line and use more cash in the near term to fund growth.
• Positive Sentiment: User engagement showed improvement—daily active users rose 12% quarter-over-quarter to 227,000, new titles have strong early metrics and ratings (Squishmallows 4.6/4.8 store ratings) and RuPaul's is showing the strongest ARPDAU within the match portfolio.
• Positive Sentiment: The company continues shareholder-friendly actions via its NCIB, having repurchased and canceled 4.5 million shares at a cost of CAD 3.0M to date while balancing buybacks with growth investments.

Presentation

[Operator]

Session for analysts only. I would now like to hand over the conference to the speaker today, Jason Bailey, Board Chair, CEO, and founder of East Side Games Group. Thank you. Please go ahead.

[Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO at East Side Games Group]

Hello and welcome everyone to the East Side Games Group Q3 2025 earnings call. I'm Jason Bailey, Board Chair and CEO of East Side Games Group. Today we will share highlights from the Third Quarter ended September 30, 2025. I'd like to remind you that certain statements made on this call are forward-looking within the meaning of applicable securities laws. This call contains references to non-GAAP measures, and please refer to our fourth quarter press release and MD&A for cautionary statements relating to the forward-looking information and reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to GAAP results. References to all figures are in CAD on an IFRS basis unless otherwise noted. Additional materials can be found on the investor section of our website at www.eastsidegamesgroup.com under the financial information section. Q3 was another solid quarter with another consecutive quarter of revenue growth.

[Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO at East Side Games Group]

We launched two new match titles that are driving strong engagement and laying a solid foundation for continued growth in this new genre for us. As of the end of Q3, match is accounting for 22% of our total revenue. The team will now provide further insights and details. First up is Mr. Chan.

[Jason Chan, Interim CFO at East Side Games Group]

Thank you, Jason. Hi everyone. I'm Jason Chan, Interim CFO of East Side Games. Today we report our results for the company's Third Quarter and year-to-date periods ending September 30, 2025. As a reminder, all amounts provided are in CAD. Our total revenues for the three- and nine-month periods ended September 30 was CAD 20 million and CAD 57.8 million, respectively. Revenue for the Third Quarter decreased by CAD 1.3 million, or 6%, compared to Q3 of last year, and increased by CAD 800,000, or 4%, sequentially, compared to Q2. Excluding one-time publisher payments, revenue growth would have been 12% sequentially quarter over quarter. As a reminder, this quarter reflects our First Quarter of the newly launched RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen and only one month of Squishmallows Match, where we've invested heavily into scaling the player base for these two games, as we have seen strong payback windows and retention numbers.

[Jason Chan, Interim CFO at East Side Games Group]

This Quarter represents peak spend, where we are aggressively acquiring users and spending on marketing within disciplined return criteria to grow these games. We have confidence that this spend will return in the next two to three quarters and then will generate sustained cash flow thereafter as we start to harvest and fully monetize these retained users for years to come. These top-line results also reflect stability in our core game portfolio and growth in our new game launches in the second half of 2025. We continue to see stability in our core game portfolio with mixed performances across titles and good investment opportunities in BFIT, Milk, and Cheech Kush. We finished the Quarter with a daily active user count of 227,000 players, which represents an increase of 12% quarter over quarter.

[Jason Chan, Interim CFO at East Side Games Group]

ARPDAU was $0.97 over the same period, which represents a decrease of 6% as a result of the influx of new users from the new game launches. Our priority remains to efficiently scale our two new game titles for the remainder of 2025 and beyond. Adjusted EBITDA for the three nine-month periods ended September 30, 2025, were negative $3 million and $600,000, respectively, compared to $2.5 million and $9 million, respectively, for the same period ended 2024. This represents a decline of $5.5 million in the comparable period in 2024. This decline can primarily be attributed to the development, launch, and marketing spend associated with the launch of RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen and Squishmallows Match titles.

[Jason Chan, Interim CFO at East Side Games Group]

As mentioned previously, we made a significant and strategic investment in our match portfolio this Quarter, allocating roughly 60% of our total marketing spend to support its future growth, including new supplemental marketing initiatives like TV ad placements, where we have seen the strongest returns on our investment. We expect to see these investments return in the next two to three quarters, and it is our belief that at the current time, this Quarter represents the trough in our adjusted EBITDA margins with the existing portfolio of games as we look into Q4 and 2026 and realize the returns on these acquired users. Future spend on these titles could remain elevated if we continue to see attractive returns. As a reminder, our core studio portfolio profitability remains consistent and stable.

[Jason Chan, Interim CFO at East Side Games Group]

The company had CAD 3.2 million in cash and CAD 2 million in debt as of the end of the Third Quarter of 2025 for a net cash position of CAD 1.2 million. The company continues to generate cash flow from its core portfolio that is being used to support the launch and future growth of the new game titles, as previously mentioned. Accordingly, with the company's strong cash generation from operations in the core portfolio and available financing, the company continues to be well-positioned to execute on further growth opportunities to provide further value for our shareholders. We will continue to repurchase our shares through the NCIB program, adhering to the exchange restrictions. In Q3, we bought back 147,000 shares and canceled 168,000 shares. To date, we have acquired and canceled a total of 4.5 million shares at a cost of CAD 3 million.

[Jason Chan, Interim CFO at East Side Games Group]

We're going to continue to balance investing in the future growth of the company with returning capital to the shareholders via the share buybacks, as we believe the market is currently undervaluing our shares. I will now pass things off to our Chief Product Officer, Jim Wagner.

[Jim Wagner, CPO at East Side Games Group]

Hello. I'm Jim Wagner. Q3 was a productive period marked by meaningful progress in product development and portfolio expansion. While we continued to execute on our core strategy of leveraging our narrative idle and mobile match 3 expertise, our recent launches also surfaced important learnings and challenges to address in the months ahead. We launched two new match 3 titles based on strong IPs, each showing encouraging but distinct results. Squishmallows Match achieved high ratings and strong player sentiment, though we see opportunities to further optimize its performance over time. RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen demonstrated promising monetization performance and effective product marketing, with ongoing opportunities to expand its audience and engagement. Both titles provide valuable insights that will help refine our approach to future updates and launches.

[Jim Wagner, CPO at East Side Games Group]

The launch of Squishmallows Match got off to a strong start, driving more installs than any of our previous match game launches and receiving positive early feedback from our players, with the game currently sitting at 4.6 stars on Google Play and 4.8 stars on the Apple App Store. Our recently introduced feature, Super Lightning Ball, has contributed to nearly a 20% increase in ARPDAU during A/B testing across our other match titles. Looking ahead, we plan to roll out eight monetization enhancements in Q4 aimed at supporting sustained growth and further strengthening the player experience. RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen had a solid launch last quarter and has maintained positive momentum with the rollout of new features, currently achieving a CAD 0.97 ARPDAU, the highest ARPDAU across our match game portfolio.

[Jim Wagner, CPO at East Side Games Group]

While we're encouraged by these results, we recognize there's still plenty of work ahead to build on this momentum and deliver the best possible experience for our players. We've introduced a second weekly pass to the game, which now contributes a meaningful 7% of our in-app purchase revenue, highlighting the strength of our monetization segmentation strategy. The launch of our daily goals feature has successfully increased daily return rates and overall player engagement. Additionally, we continue to enhance content by releasing eight new queens through our weekly queen pass. Other key highlights from Q3 include Bud Farm Idle Tycoon. The event Piggy Bank, tested through an A/B test experiment, proved to be a monetization highlight, delivering a 4.5% lift in total revenue. We plan to replicate the success across our other titles in the portfolio.

[Jim Wagner, CPO at East Side Games Group]

Cheech and Chong: Kush Kingdom, our match-3 game, experienced impressive growth and scaling, with revenue increasing by 260% over the quarter. Doctor Who: Lost in Time. We launched a brand new collection feature alongside a monthly pass for monetization, which has shown strong early results and established an additional steady revenue stream for that game. Based on the momentum of Q3, our Q4 roadmap is focused on deepening engagement, increasing retention, and layering in new monetization opportunities across our top titles. In terms of engagement and retention, we're revitalizing several games with new ways to play and connect. The Office: Somehow We Manage is launching a new mini-game, while RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen will roll out a daily leaderboard based on a popular segment from the show to boost engagement and competition.

[Jim Wagner, CPO at East Side Games Group]

Trailer Park Boys: Greasy Money will introduce in-game chat, a studio first, to deepen community and retention. Milk Farm Idle Tycoon is expanding the core loop with new production areas to enrich the overall experience. In terms of new monetization streams, we'll be adding additional passes. Match Queen will introduce a collab pass for brand/influencer integrations to drive new players to the game. In Squishmallows Match, we're adding a pass to increase collectible incentives. Following great Q3 success, we're planning a wider rollout of a new way to buy in-game currency to Trailer Park Boys: Greasy Money, RuPaul's Drag Race: Superstar, and Cheech and Chong: Kush Kingdom. In summary, Q3 was a period of high-impact execution, with new game launches and feature releases driving growth across our key performance indicators.

[Jim Wagner, CPO at East Side Games Group]

While we recognize there is still progress to be made with RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen and Squishmallows Match, we remain confident in the strategic plans we have in place. We believe our focused approach in Q4 will sustain momentum and deliver long-term value to both our players and shareholders. Over to Lisa Shek, Chief Operating Officer.

[Lisa Shek, COO at East Side Games Group]

Hi, I'm Lisa Shek. Squishmallows Match is our fourth title in the match genre. This marks a major milestone in diversifying our portfolio and continuing to expand into new audience segments. Working with Jazzwares, we've delivered a game that not only honors the Squishmallows brand but also brings it to life through high-quality and engaging gameplay. We're also excited to be testing new marketing initiatives with Jazzwares, including early access to real-world content drops exclusive for our mobile players. Our core titles remain profitable, allowing us to experiment and invest in the long-term growth of our match business through new channels, partnerships, and innovative initiatives. This quarter, we saw strong results from our first-ever in-show TV placement on RuPaul's Drag Race, which attracted our most engaged players to date, driving a 300% increase in first-week player value for that segment.

[Lisa Shek, COO at East Side Games Group]

Building on this success, we're planning additional high-impact collaborations that extend our games into cultural moments and entertainment spaces where our audiences already live and play. Looking ahead to Q4, we'll double down on our top-performing match games supported by holiday-driven events and seasonal content. With these initiatives, we're well-positioned to close 2025 strong and set the stage for continued success in 2026. Over to Hakeem Harrison, Head of Growth.

[Hakeem Harrison, Head of Growth at East Side Games Group]

Hello. I'm Hakeem Harrison, and I lead ESG's growth initiatives along with the wider marketing organization. Looking back at Q3, our biggest win on RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen came via strong collaboration between organic marketing, growth, and analytics to capitalize on the final two in-show placements on RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars in July. After seeing how the first two in-show placements boosted installs, we increased our marketing spend by 66% the weekend following the July 18 placement. Normally, that kind of jump would make installs more expensive and returns lower, but in this case, cost stayed steady and early returns actually improved. We also prioritized building a strong foundation for our organic marketing ecosystem, launching high-engagement campaigns and co-branded collaborations with Jazzwares to grow our community from the ground up on Meta and TikTok.

[Hakeem Harrison, Head of Growth at East Side Games Group]

This strategy is central to driving authentic word-of-mouth momentum, strengthening fan loyalty, and fueling sustained cost-efficient growth paired with UA initiatives. Q3 was a strong quarter for core portfolio UA as we were able to increase investment 25% quarter over quarter while staying in the pocket for our break-even targets. As we prepare for Match Queen's appearance in every episode of the new season of RuPaul's Drag Race, marketing and growth will test screens and speakers channels in Q4, including connected TV and digital podcasts and radio. The goal is to replicate organic and non-attributed install volume by placing Match Queen mid-reel on Paramount Plus, Amazon Prime Video, and other IPs with strong streaming audiences. Pairing audio with targeted CTV advertising has shown a 20% incremental performance lift per iHeart Media. To offset high seasonal pricing in the U.S. and tier-one Western markets, Q4 will emphasize localized international expansion.

[Hakeem Harrison, Head of Growth at East Side Games Group]

This includes refining geo-targeting, language adaptation, and creative testing to drive installs and lower CPI across new markets. We're expanding creative outsourcing to broaden appeal beyond the core Drag Race audience and attract more casual gamers, lowering acquisition costs and increasing campaign diversity. In parallel, we're deepening player segmentation across match titles to sharpen targeting, creative direction, and live ops campaigns, driving install growth, stronger retention, and higher ARPDAU through localized personalization. By leveraging our existing marketing ecosystem, including social channels, newsletter, and landing page touchpoints, to build early awareness, drive adoption, and establish an authentic player base along with paid scale. Evaluating opportunities to apply full-funnel learnings from RuPaul's Drag Race: Match Queen and Squishmallows Match across other titles, from creative strategy and UA pacing to influencer integration, community engagement, and live ops retention loops.

[Hakeem Harrison, Head of Growth at East Side Games Group]

The goal is to create a repeatable, insights-driven launch framework that maximizes both organic momentum and paid efficiency across the ESG portfolio.

[Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO at East Side Games Group]

Thank you, everyone. Q3 was another growth quarter. We continue to build momentum in Q4 with our growth efforts in match, as well as keeping our core portfolio of idle games performing. Match is now a significant contributor to our top-line revenue at an average of CAD 1.5 million in September, and with a DAU of 77,000 and an ARPDAU of CAD 0.64. This ARPDAU is well above industry standards in this genre. As Hakeem mentioned, we are pushing hard with marketing on these new games in areas outside of paid UA campaigns within the usual networks. We continue to buy aggressively in the traditional networks, but we know that out-of-the-park success will be found through non-traditional means. We hope to see these efforts pay off in Q4, and especially in 2026.

[Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO at East Side Games Group]

Though EBITDA was significantly negative and cash on hand decreased significantly, this is directly attributable to our successful investments in these new titles. We are extremely confident that this investment and ongoing investments will pay back with positive ROI in the next two to three quarters. These are players and games with multi-year lifespans. Heavy investment now will pay dividends for many years to come. We especially see this with our titles in our core portfolio. Some of the games are approaching their 10-year anniversaries and continue to be our top-performing titles. We expect to continue our deep investing period for these titles through Q4, a positive sign for the health of our success in our foray into the match genre. Thank you for joining today's call. We look forward to updating you on our continued progress next quarter. We will now take some questions from our shareholders and analysts.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star one on your touch-tone phone. You will hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Neal Gilmer of Haywood Securities. Your line is already open.

[Neal Gilmer, Analyst at Haywood Securities]

Thanks very much, and good afternoon. In the prepared remarks, you referred to sort of this Q3 as sort of the trough. The sales and marketing spend, not quite, but almost double sort of what we've been seeing recently, and obviously touched on that in various aspects of your prepared remarks. How should we be thinking about that going forward? Obviously, that spend is to drive the revenue growth, so you can expect an increased growth rate on the revenue side of things. Do you need to continue investing at these sorts of levels, or your reference to sort of this being the trough, meaning that there's going to be a little bit of a scale back on the spend from the CAD 12 million that was in Q3?

[Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO at East Side Games Group]

Hakeem, good to hear from you. You're correct. You understand that, right? Our most aggressive spend was in Q3. Q4 spend is still going to be high, but not quite as high as Q3 was. We're still pushing hard, especially with getting Squishmallows off the ground. Roo Match has kind of hit a nice momentum, and we feel really, really good about that. We have really good insights on where we're spending and how that's coming back. We have huge plans for that, especially in Q1. Yeah, I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, but I want to say it was somewhere around CAD 6 million that we spent just on marketing these new match titles, and it's not going to be quite as high in Q4.

[Neal Gilmer, Analyst at Haywood Securities]

Okay. Appreciate that. I take it from the prepared remarks, it sounds like Q4, maybe Q1, you're going to stay sort of in that EBITDA negative territory until that really sort of inflection of revenue sort of helps offset these increased costs, and that we should be looking sort of at that back to the EBITDA positive in and around mid of 2026?

[Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO at East Side Games Group]

That's correct. That's a good assessment as well. We're shooting for longer payback windows in match than we do with idle. With idle, we generally shoot for kind of 90-day payback windows. In match, we're shooting more for 180-day payback windows. The cost of user acquisition is a little bit higher, but the retention rates on match are also higher. We see a lot better, a higher number of players who install today still playing in a year from now. We know that that longer-term investment is worth it. As mentioned in the prepared remarks, some of our titles are approaching 10 years and still performing strong, and we expect the same thing to happen here with these match titles.

[Neal Gilmer, Analyst at Haywood Securities]

Right. And so that's just the nature of the different genres and the customer base?

[Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO at East Side Games Group]

Yeah. It is the opportunity, really, of knowing that they have those stronger retention rates and that the games are a little bit stickier. We are able to spend a little bit more aggressively with the user acquisition now and knowing it will pay off in the long run.

[Neal Gilmer, Analyst at Haywood Securities]

Okay. Fair enough. You tapped your line of credit a little bit in Q3, it looks like. What's sort of your philosophy or plans going forward? Are you going to continue to draw based on sort of how you see the return on this user acquisition spend, or how should we be thinking about that?

[Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO at East Side Games Group]

We're happy with the early results and the numbers and the experience coming back with our user spend now, so we're going to keep that aggressive. I do expect us to probably go into debt. Right now, we're tapping our line of credit a little bit just for cash flow management, but we still have cash on hand. I expect that through Q4, we'll probably eat up some more of that cash and go into and be actually tapping our line of credit, but not terribly significantly.

[Neal Gilmer, Analyst at Haywood Securities]

Okay. All right. Thanks very much. I'll pass the line.

[Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO at East Side Games Group]

Thanks.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have a question, please press star one. There are no further questions at this time. I would hand over the call to Jason Bailey for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

[Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO at East Side Games Group]

Thanks for attending, everyone. Appreciate it. The last couple of quarters, we've done the earnings video, and then we've decided to kind of go back to this earnings call format. It is probably going to take a bit to kind of get the momentum back on it and then do an annual video instead of a quarterly video. I strongly suggest you go on YouTube and check those previous quarter videos out. Thank you for attending this call. As always, you can reach out to me, Jason@eastsidegames.com, and I'm happy to engage with anybody who has any questions. Thanks for your time, and talk soon.

[Operator]

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.

[Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO at East Side Games Group]

Thank you.

Participants

Executives

• Jason Chan, Interim CFO
• Jason Bailey, Founder, Executive Chair, and CEO
• Hakeem Harrison, Head of Growth
• Jim Wagner, CPO
• Lisa Shek, COO

Analysts

• Neal Gilmer, Analyst at Haywood Securities