Rush Street Interactive Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Rush Street Interactive First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. All participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation.

Operator

Please note that this conference call is being recorded today, 04/30/2025. I'll now turn the call over to Kyle Sauers, Chief Financial Officer.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon. By now, everyone should have access to our first quarter twenty twenty five earnings release. It can be found under the heading Financials Quarterly Results in the Investors section of the RSI website at rushtreeinteractive.com. Some of our comments will be forward looking statements within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Forward looking statements are not statements of historical fact and are usually identified by the use of words such as will, expect, should or other similar phrases and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

We assume no responsibility for updating any forward looking statements. Therefore, you should exercise caution in interpreting and relying on them. We refer you to our SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact our future operating results and financial condition. During the call, we will discuss our non GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating the company's operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

We will be discussing adjusted EBITDA, which we define as net income or loss before interest, income taxes, depreciation and amortization, share based compensation, adjustments for certain one time or non recurring items and other adjustments that are either non cash or are not related to our underlying business performance. A reconciliation of these non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure is available in our first quarter twenty twenty five earnings release and our investor deck, which is available in the Investors section of the RSI website at rushstreetinteractive.com. For purposes of today's call, unless noted otherwise, when discussing profitability, EBITDA or other income statement measures other than revenue, we're referring to those items on a non GAAP adjusted EBITDA basis. With me on the call today, we have Richard Schwartz, Chief Executive Officer. We will first provide some opening remarks and then open the call to questions.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Richard.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Thanks, Kyle. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today for our first quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. We have started the year with strong momentum, continuing to build on our success from last year. Our first quarter revenue was $262,000,000 up 21% year over year, and adjusted EBITDA was 33,000,000 almost double compared to the same period last year. We continue to achieve strong results by prioritizing innovation and the quality of our player experience, while at the same time, excelling in the efficient acquisition and retention of high value players.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

In essence, we are consistently adding more players to our platform. These players are of higher value and we are acquiring them as efficiently as ever. This growth is driving significant profitability and reinforcing our strong momentum. During the first quarter, we continued to experience solid growth in both our online casino and online sports verticals. Online casino grew by 25%, while sports betting grew by 11%.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

The growth in sports betting occurred despite player friendly outcomes throughout March Madness, as well as the Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl win, which impacted us because of our large sports betting player base in the Delaware, South Jersey and Pennsylvania areas. The balanced expansion across product verticals is a proof point to our persistent efforts to enhance the user experience across all product verticals and customer touch points as we attract and retain high value players. Our strategy of differentiating our offerings continues to pay off, driving engagement and retention on our platform. In North America, MAU growth for the quarter was 17% year over year. And in Latin America, our MAU continued to expand at a high rate, growing 61% year over year compared to last year's quarter.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

In fact, March was the second highest level of MAUs in LatAm despite the tax situation in Colombia, trailing only last July when Colombia played in the finals of the Copa America. I will touch more on the tax situation in Colombia in a few minutes to provide an update from our last call. First, a few takeaways worth noting that underlie the strong results. Domestically, we saw very solid growth across the board, with year over year revenue growth in 15 out of our 16 North American online markets. This is despite the challenging sports hold in Q1 of this year that I referenced earlier.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Our markets with both online casino and online sports betting, such as Michigan, Delaware and New Jersey, continue to perform exceptionally well. For example, in Michigan, we demonstrated impressive growth with revenue up 40% during the quarter. In Delaware, this was our first quarter with year over year comparisons and the revenue growth exceeded 80%. While we anticipate facing tougher comparisons as the year progresses, these Q1 results underscore our continued enthusiasm for this market. New Jersey also remains a strong contributor, growing 27% during the quarter.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

As the industry approaches the twelfth year of legalized online casinos in the state of New Jersey, the market has shown consistent year over year revenue growth, and we believe it serves as a prime example of the long term prospects and durability of the online casino industry. Internationally, we continue to generate strong results. In Mexico, growth accelerated from Q4 and we are seeing year over year growth near 50 as we begin our third full year. In Colombia, our GGR was up 55% in local currency, while we've been navigating a temporarily imposed 19% value added tax on player deposits. On our last earnings call, we were only a few days into the new Colombian VAT tax and were uncertain about how we'd approach the change and the impact on us and the broader market.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

In response, at least up to this point, similar to others in the market, we have been absorbing the tax through higher bonusing rather than passing the cost on to our players. This approach has allowed us to retain our market share, maintain strong player activity and keep GGR levels near all time highs, albeit with lower NGR. To provide clarity on the upcoming time line, recall that the Colombian President issued two emergency decrees, one declaring a state of emergency in the Catatumbo region due to increased guerrilla activity, which would be the basis to institute emergency tax increases, and another imposing the actual 19% VAT tax to fund efforts against the guerrilla threat. Just recently, the president chose not to renew the state of emergency decree as of April 24. Both decrees are under automatic review by the Colombian constitutional court.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

A summary of the court's ruling on the first decree was released yesterday, providing that the first decree was declared constitutional in limited part. We will review the court's full opinion on this decree once available. Regardless, the court must separately and independently rule on the second decree's constitutionality, which is likely by late May or June. Depending on these court rulings, we and our competitors may adjust to boating strategies to better suit operators. Regarding legislative activity, there has been exciting progress in online gaming legislation in Alberta.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

The iGaming Alberta Act, known as Bill 48, has advanced to the third step of its five step legalization process, moving to the committee stage. This bill aims to establish an open market for online sports betting and online casinos in the province of Alberta, transitioning from the current monopoly model operated by state owned Play Alberta. The bill proposes creating the Alberta iGaming Corporation to manage contracts with operators, while regulation will be handled by the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission. These changes are designed to bring unregulated operators under a regulated market, similar to Ontario's model. We are excited about the progress made and expect to be operating online casino and sports betting in this market next year, leveraging our success in online casino markets in North America.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

We continue to monitor sessions in various U. S. States. The increasingly challenging economic realities faced by states, combined with the proven financial and consumer protection benefits of our regulation and the fact that unregulated online casinos in the form of online casino sweepstakes and offshore casino sites already exist in the space creates a compelling case for the legalization, regulation and taxation of online casinos. The reality is that legalizing online casino remains one of the best options for state governments to make up any near or long term budget deficits.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

It's reliable, proven and straightforward for states to implement. In short, legalizing online casinos would be an additive contributor to state budgets, generate large and meaningful tax amounts for states and in states where land based casinos already exist, grow the overall pie of gaming revenues for those states. As more states recognize the dual benefits of protecting their citizens and generating substantial tax revenues, we believe the iGaming legalization will gain momentum in the coming years. Reflecting on the current economic macro situation, we are a well positioned pure play in the online casino and OSB space. Our digital platform offers a very high quality entertainment along with affordability and convenience.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

This makes it an attractive option for consumers, especially during challenging economic times. The accessible nature of our content makes it an appealing source of entertainment, positioning us as a resilient and well positioned among other consumer facing industries. We believe that our focus on delivering consistent performance and driving value for our shareholders will continue to make us a strong performer. Our platform's ease of use, affordability and innovation combined with our award winning customer service are key factors that are helping us to excel during these challenging times and will contribute to us continuing to be an outperformer. I want to emphasize our unwavering commitment to delivering value to our shareholders and providing an unparalleled gaming experience to our users.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Our success over recent years has set a strong foundation, and we are optimistic about building on this foundation going forward. Thank you for your continued support and confidence in Rush Street Interactive. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kyle.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Thanks, Richard. First quarter revenue was $262,400,000 up 21% year over year, driven by strong growth of approximately 25% year over year in online casino and approximately 11% in online sports. It was very encouraging to see that our first quarter results were also strong across market vintages and geographies. In the first quarter, North American MAUs were 203,000, up 17% year over year, while ARPMAU in North America increased to $368 up 3% year over year. The fast growth in players while maintaining an even increase in our leading art model level is a testament to our underlying strategic focus on user engagement and retention.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

As you would expect, our player growth is faster in the higher value markets that include iCasino since that's where we invest more of our resources. In Latin America, as Richard mentioned, we continue to experience high levels of player growth with our MAUs increasing year over year by 61% to 354,000. This player base is a new quarterly record for LatAm in total, but also a new quarterly record for Columbia even in the face of the temporary VAT tax implementation. Our ARPMAU in this region was $36 As you would expect, ARPML in LatAm was impacted by the higher bonus in Colombia that Richard explained earlier. For those that track our MAL and ARPML trends closely, we've added a table on the back of our investor deck that shows historical trends.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

I'll point out that we've made some immaterial changes to the historical numbers to be consistent in all markets by only including players who have placed real money wagers in that data, essentially excluding players who have only placed wagers with bonus money. Moving to gross profit margins, in the first quarter they increased by 125 basis points compared to last year to 34.9%. This improvement was driven by ongoing trends in revenue diversification and higher revenue growth in our more profitable markets. On the marketing front, we remain disciplined and deliberate with our spend. We are allocating more resources to markets with better return opportunities while maintaining flexibility in our investments.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

In the first quarter, we increased marketing spend by 3% compared to last year, yet achieved leverage over our marketing spend and delivered another record EBITDA quarter. First quarter marketing spend was $38,800,000 or 15% of revenue compared to 17% of revenue during the first quarter last year. Our cost to acquire players in North America continue to be near the lowest they've been since going public and just as important our first time depositors in North American iCasino markets even when we exclude our newest market Delaware, continue to grow nicely year over year even while the markets become more mature. A testament to the expanding size of these markets, our ability to refine our marketing approach and success continuing to find new valuable players. For the full year, we plan to continue our disciplined approach, making investments where we see opportunities and expecting incremental leverage over our marketing spend again in 2025 with marketing spend continuing to grow at a lower rate than revenue.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

G and A expenses for the first quarter were $19,500,000 or 7.4% of revenue compared to 8.4% last year. For the full year, we continue to expect to achieve modest leverage over our G and A expense. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $33,200,000 reflecting the revenue growth and increased leverage over expenses, partially offset by the increased bonusing costs in Colombia. We ended the quarter with $228,000,000 in unrestricted cash and no debt. We generated approximately $25,000,000 in cash during the quarter, excluding stock repurchases and stock withheld for employee tax obligations on Vestas.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 500,000 shares at an average price of $10.35 under our previously announced $50,000,000 share repurchase program. Subsequent to quarter end, we purchased an additional 234,000 shares at an average price of $10.55 leaving approximately $42,000,000 remaining on our repurchase program. We are reiterating our full year revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance for 2025. We continue to expect 2025 revenue to be between $1,100,000,000 and $1.8 with a midpoint of $1,450,000,000 representing a 13% year over year increase. For the full year, we anticipate adjusted EBITDA to be between $115,000,000 and $135,000,000 which represents $125,000,000 at the midpoint, up 35 year over year.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

With regard to how we performed relative to guidance since our last call, while Columbia is actually performing above our base expectations for player counts, handle and GGR, it's below our base expectations for net revenue due to the higher bonusing. This has been offset by the continued outperformance in North American iCasino markets and the positive trends in players and revenue in those jurisdictions. Our guidance ranges for revenue and EBITDA continue to include a range of potential outcomes from the recent tax changes in Colombia with the assumption that the tax lasts through the end of the year. Given how strong the volumes have been in Colombia, should the temporary back tax go away prior to year end, we could see meaningful upside to both revenue and EBITDA. And one last reminder, our guidance includes only those markets that are live as of today.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

And with that, operator, we can open the line for questions.

Operator

The first question is from the line of Bernie McTurnan with Needham and Company. Your line is now open.

Bernie Mcternan
Senior Research Analyst at Needham & Company

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe just to start, I love to touch on Colombia a little bit more and understand the investments that you guys are that the company is making. What are you seeing from a competitive standpoint? Are other operators also offsetting that tax for consumers?

Bernie Mcternan
Senior Research Analyst at Needham & Company

And importantly, do you think you're taking share of MAUs and handle in the region? And then I have a follow-up.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Sure. Hey, Bernie, I'll take it and see if Colin wants add anything. But yes, it's we are bonusing at higher rates, as we mentioned, and passing the cost on to other players, which is consistent with what all the other players in that market are doing as well. We are, as we also mentioned, having all kinds of record performance on GGR, volume handles. So we feel very confident that our decision to do that has been a good one because it's continuing to ensure that we retain or possibly grow share.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

As you know, the market share information isn't disclosed in that market, so it's not something we can speak to directly. But we are feeling like we've doing everything within our control to make sure we're managing it smartly. I think that at the end of the day, as I tell our team often, we could focus on execution and what we can control. And I think we're doing a really nice job there of managing that business through this challenging period.

Bernie Mcternan
Senior Research Analyst at Needham & Company

Understood. And then I wanted to touch on Delaware, which I think has been a major success story for Rush Street. Lots of growth last year. How should we think about growth in 2025 and frankly beyond too in terms of I think it was a large contributor to consolidated growth last year. Should it slow down?

Bernie Mcternan
Senior Research Analyst at Needham & Company

Is it a tough comparison? Like how investors think about Delaware in 2025?

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Yes. I'll take that. Appreciate the question. And you're right, Delaware has been a great win for us and it continues to be performing really well. Our expectation is that we'll continue to see really nice growth out of Delaware.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

As you point out, we've lapped now the launch of Delaware for us, which was right at the end of twenty twenty three, so call it the beginning of twenty twenty four. So as the year goes on, it's logical that the growth rate will slow down in that market specifically.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

But

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

we feel like there's a long road ahead for Delaware. And we probably mentioned it before, but if you just triangulate around how other markets have performed that have iCasino, look at adult population and income levels, this could be approaching a $300,000,000 GGR market in a few years. And maybe there's a little discount off of that because there's not as much competition there. But that's a long ways from where we're running today. So there's a lot of upside in Delaware still.

Bernie Mcternan
Senior Research Analyst at Needham & Company

Understood. Thank you both.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Thank you.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Jordan Bender with Citizens. Your line is now open.

Jordan Bender
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citizens Capital Markets and Advisory

Good afternoon, everyone. I want to stick with Columbia here for a second. So net revenue coming in below your expectations, but are there any early learnings that you can use to adjust the business model as the year goes on to better tailor what you're doing in the market to improve those NGR results to be more in line with the range that you gave when you gave guidance last quarter? Thank you.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Yes. Thanks, Jordan. So we're continuing to adjust. And obviously, the competitive landscape and how our competitors are treating customers is an important part of that and making sure that we're keeping players excited beyond the great platform that we provide to them. As I think you understand, the tax itself

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

that players are responsible

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

for but that we're making up for with a cash back bonus is a tax on deposits. So there is a bit of a multiplying effect there if there are multiple deposits and there's withdrawals. We've one of the things we've done that we've been proud of is adjust to that and make sure that we're reducing that deposit turnover as much as possible. We have reduced our marketing spend a little bit down there in response to this. But we'll continue to monitor what the competitors are doing.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

And if it if this tax does appear like it's going to last through the end of the year, then we'll see how the competitors respond and think about what our response might be. But we're doing everything we can to maximize that net revenue off of what is a growing GGR base. Mean, one of the previous question was about market share and Richard pointed out that we don't know for sure if we're taking market share, but GGR up 55% in Q1, and it's actually up even more than that in April. Unless you assume the market's growing at that rate, you have to assume that our strategy and our product is taking share for sure.

Jordan Bender
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citizens Capital Markets and Advisory

Great. Switching gears here. Pennsylvania just joined the multistate Internet gaming agreement, which should help liquidity across your platform. I don't think poker is a huge driver of revenue, but curious to get your thoughts around another large state added to the agreement and how that could help cater to the segment of your database that participates in poker. Sure.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Thanks. Yes. We're real excited for the launch that we achieved in Pennsylvania. Was a successful debut of a poker platform, which is hard to achieve, and it's one of the it is the newest platform in the industry, and we're very proud of what we've been able to do there. But the goal for us, though, was to be ready and to make sure that platform is capable of handling all the multiple states player liquidity that now fortunately is available to us.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

So we will be expanding in the future states. We've made a statement earlier this week to those to that effect. And as you probably know, our strategy for the poker has really been more of an amenity ultimately, and we're using it as a cross sell to casino and sports. So it's easy to say that, but it's hard to deliver that on the actual way the product works. We've done all kinds of really nice features and functions we've added to the platform to make it really easy for a user to to to play the other products and and and and achieve that result that we've set up for ourselves as a purpose of that is to be able to attract customers that wanna play poker.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Once they're playing poker with us, have the other great offerings available to them in the other product verticals. And also, of course, to ensure that players that enjoy our casino and sports book stay with us when they want to play poker. And so between the two Phils that we've who are brand ambassadors of poker, Phil Galfond and Phil Hellmuth, we've been really able to really reach a nice audience and a lot of enthusiasm and excitement around this poker vertical for us. And we will be and are excited to be able to expand that into other states in the near future.

Jordan Bender
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citizens Capital Markets and Advisory

Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig Hallum. Your line is now open.

Analyst

Good afternoon. This is Will on for Ryan. Thanks for taking our questions. Just a quick one on Columbia and then I'll have a follow-up. Could you quantify how much the increased promotions to Matt that VAT tax impacted revenue in ARPDAU in the quarter?

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Sure. So I gave a couple of stats that I'll expand upon or a couple of stats a minute ago. Q1 GGR was up 55%. And I mentioned that April, that GGR growth rate is even higher than that. And if you look at that growth rate, that's fairly consistent with what we've been seeing in Colombia for the last couple of years.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

And during that time, our GGR and our net revenue have grown at a fairly similar pace, which tells you that the bonusing in total, the bonusing hadn't changed a whole lot over the last couple of years. But to your question, in each of March and April, our net revenue growth was significantly impacted. So in March, our net revenue in U. S. Dollars was actually down slightly year over year.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

And in April, it's been about flat year over year. So we've

Jordan Bender
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citizens Capital Markets and Advisory

got

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

a market that may have otherwise been growing at 50% plus that's now relatively flat year over year because of this temporary VAT tax. So I think there's a couple of takeaways from that. The first is the removal of the VAT tax should be a very meaningful driver of growth for us when that happens and when we have those as comparables with when the tax was in place. And I think the other piece is, and we said this in the prepared remarks, that the rest of the business is performing very, very well, such that we outperformed in Q1 and reiterated the guidance for the year even in the face of the additional bonusing in Colombia.

Analyst

Got it. Thanks for the color there. Maybe a quick one on the constitutional decree. So you said the first one was found partially constitutional and the second one, obviously, related to the tax. It's kind of up for debate right now.

Analyst

If we do see that continue out until the end of the year, could it be renewed? Or is it pretty much transitory until that point? Thanks.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Sure. Yes. It's the limitations of the emergency decree are that you could only extend it to a certain period of time. And that's one of the decisions the court will make, whether it's a six month period or throughout the rest of the calendar year. In terms of being able to exceed beyond that, you wouldn't be able to proceed without that per the guidance unless you have a congressional support for that, which in the past has been absent.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

So it does feel fairly likely that it would end either after six months, so still a

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

few months before the end

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

of the year or at the end of the calendar year.

Analyst

Great. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Jed Kelly with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.

Jed Kelly
Managing Director - Equity Research at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

Hey, great, great. Thanks for taking my questions. Seeing really nice marketing leverage, we have seen kind of some of the larger land based casino players start to grow their product too for iGaming. Can you just kind of expound more on what's sort of driving the marketing leverage even though the market remains pretty competitive because it continues to be pretty impressive?

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Yes, sure. Hey, Jud.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

The end of the day,

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

it comes down to a real simple business here of can we have a reasonable rate of investment to acquire customers, and then we let our experience take over. And I think the quality of our experience continues to be the reason why we're able to achieve that result the results that we are despite not having the strongest brand in the market and not having the largest budget and not having a land based property driving traffic to us consistently at the levels that you see in some of the larger land based casino groups that reported earlier this week. So at the end the day, we focus on experiences and how can we differentiate those experiences to the point where a player who sign up for multiple accounts, most players have multiple accounts. What's gonna motivate them to spend a higher percentage of their entertainment budget with us? And what it comes down to is can we offer them an experience that's unique and compelling and fun in a way that's not available elsewhere?

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

And the answer has been continues to be yes. We do offer something unique and something that's entertaining and engaging for customers in a more sophisticated fashion than most other products in the industry, which are mostly just offering, you know, a game library from a game lobby where we have all kinds of fun experiences, whether it's community, chat, engagement, or whether it's all about promotional engines that lead players to engage with each other in fun promotional games.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

I think at the end of

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

the day, the players who are playing often and frequently notice these features, and they stay active with us because of that.

Jed Kelly
Managing Director - Equity Research at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

Got it. That's helpful. Then just real quickly on the guidance. I see you're maintaining your revenue guidance. However, I think 1Q was 21% revenue growth kind of implies a deceleration even though you have similar comps throughout the year versus 1Q.

Jed Kelly
Managing Director - Equity Research at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

So can you talk about anything we should be watching for, for the balance of the year? Thanks.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Yes. Thanks, Jud. So maybe just to frame that, I think given the guidance that we've offered, if you're looking at the midpoint, it is likely that revenue would be lower in Q2 and Q3 than it was in Q1 and that then Q4 would be the largest revenue quarter of the year. I think the things to think about, one is that I mentioned on a previous question is just lapping Delaware. And while we still expect really nice growth out of Delaware, the growth rate in Delaware is likely to be slower as the year goes on.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

And then another piece just really, I'll say kind of Q1 specific is that the VAT tax in Colombia went into effect about almost two thirds of the way through the first quarter. So we didn't have the headwind of that tax and that bonusing for most of Q1. And under the guidance that we've offered assuming that the tax lasts through the end of the year, that tax burden will be there or the bonusing burden will be there throughout all of Q2 and the other quarters. So that would be a headwind relative to Q1. And then maybe the last thing just building in some potential changes in consumer behavior.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

I think Richard pointed out, we haven't seen anything in our data or our experience that's suggesting any consumer changes. But certainly, there's a lot of rhetoric and discussion around that topic. So we just want to be mindful to keep that in mind and the thoughts and the guidance.

Jed Kelly
Managing Director - Equity Research at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

Got it. And then just real quick, what's the tax rate we should assume for your adjusted EPS?

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Let me get back to you on that, Jed, because there's some moving parts there. Part of it being that Colombia is changing pretty quickly. And at the moment, Colombia is the only market where we're paying any meaningful income tax. So I'll come back to you on that.

Jed Kelly
Managing Director - Equity Research at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from David Katz with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my question. One of the areas that, I guess, we were obligated to discuss is the prediction markets. And on the one hand, is that something that you would contemplate engaging in, in some fashion?

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

And second, if you have kind of any perspective on how you think that evolves in The U. S? And whether it has any kind of meaningful impact on what you're doing on the sports betting side, that

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

would be helpful. Thank you.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Sure. Hey, David. I'll take that one. Yes, we've been very focused on ramping up our education on that market opportunity, making sure we are aware of all possibilities. Should that market persist and grow into a legal market that us and others are able to participate in.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Clearly, as others have noted, right currently today, there's a limited amount of liquidity and a limited number of markets that have enough liquidity to offer bets, but you would expect over time that, that could and would grow to a greater variety of options. So it is something that we are, like I said, very aware of and very focused on understanding all the aspects of it. And should there be an opportunity where licensed operators like us on a state by state level are able to participate in that market, that's certainly something we would consider at that time.

David Katz
David Katz
Managing Director at Jefferies

Understood. Thanks very much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie. Your line is now open.

Chad Beynon
Chad Beynon
Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. Richard, Kyle, I wanted to ask about some of the other international markets, I guess, and Peru specifically, the TAMs that we've been thinking about before, do you still believe those to be true? You know, how are those markets ramping? And then also adjacent to that, are there other international markets that you have your eye on at this time?

Chad Beynon
Chad Beynon
Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group

Yes,

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

sure. Hey, I'll start and then maybe Kyle can feel free to add some extra context. But in terms of Mexico, as you heard, we're really seeing a lot of great growth out of that market. It's continuing to be one that really excites us, and things are moving in a really great direction for us there. As we've noted before, we expect over time, it will be one of the largest markets in LatAm, larger than Colombia ultimately.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

And for us, specifically, as we've mentioned before, post launch, Mexico is still tracking ahead of where Colombia was in revenues after the same period of time after launch. So we feel really optimistic about Mexico. Peru has been a story where we haven't invested much in marketing yet because we're continuing to optimize the experience and localize it. It's something that we continue to be feel positive about. There has been a market that we haven't ramped up yet.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

And so it's still something that we're excited to be able to do in the future given the relatively large population that country has. There are other LatAm markets as well that we have our focused on, have our attention on and have been evaluating ways to enter those markets. We haven't announced anything, and so won't be able to share anything with you today. But certainly, as you can imagine, once you have a great brand, a great platform, a great team, great marketing team, operations, local knowledge of experiences in those regions, it becomes a lot easier for us to be able to add and be successful in future markets. So there is great opportunities ahead in that region, but we're being very selective in making sure that we don't

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

move faster than we need

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

to because there's still a lot of growth in existing markets that we're operating in.

Chad Beynon
Chad Beynon
Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group

Okay. Great. And then on OSB product growth, you mentioned the Eagles, March Madness, some of the pressure that you saw in the quarter there that put a ceiling on the OSB growth for the quarter. But just thinking about single game parlays, hold rates, etcetera, were those up meaningfully for the quarter? And should we expect for those to be up as look through the rest

Chad Beynon
Chad Beynon
Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group

of the year? Thank you.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Yes. So I can start and if there's anything you want to add Richard, feel free. But our hold rates, Chad, as you mentioned, they've continued to improve and it's because of the improvements in the product and merchandising and improvement in the bet mix towards parlays, same game parlays, our PropCentral, PropPacks, that drive the higher margin betting. So we have continued to improve our overall sports hold. And that can apply to both The U.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

S. And to Latin America. But as you point out,

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

we had a little bit

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

of a headwind here in The U. S. From the Super Bowl and March Madness.

Chad Beynon
Chad Beynon
Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group

Great. Thanks, Kyle. Nice quarter, guys.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Joe South with Susquehanna. Your line is now open.

Joseph Stauff
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna International Group

Thanks a lot. Hello, Richard and Kyle. I wanted to ask on the user growth in the quarter in North America, 17 Percent. That's a strong number. I guess it's fair to assume a heavy portion of that is Delaware, but I was wondering if you can give us some idea of the concentration in terms of Delaware and maybe non Delaware.

Joseph Stauff
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna International Group

And then the second question I wanted to understand if could is, Richard, you had given the growth in Michigan, Delaware, New Jersey, and I was curious about Pennsylvania. That's a pretty big state for you guys. I was just wondering

Joseph Stauff
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna International Group

how

Joseph Stauff
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna International Group

that is growing in terms of, again, your 16 states.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Yes. Thanks, Joe. So the first piece on the mile growth during the quarter. So Delaware made up kind of mid single digits of that 17%. So I think it was somewhere around 6%.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

And then the remainder would have been from all the other North American markets. Most I think actually almost all of the rest of the growth came from markets that have iCasino, probably not a surprise since that's where we have put most of our marketing efforts. That's where a lot of that growth is coming from. Not coincidentally, those are higher value players and helping to drive the revenue growth for sure. On the second question, Pennsylvania, it was a grower for us year over year, but low single digits.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

I think something like 2% or 3%. No surprise. I think that that's a market that has much lower margins for us. So there's not as much investment going in there. So that's certainly a drag on the overall revenue growth rate.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

But the revenue growth that we are achieving is coming from our higher margin markets.

Joseph Stauff
Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna International Group

Got it. Thanks a lot. Very helpful.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from the line of Mike Hickey with Benchmark Company. Your line is now open.

Mike Hickey
Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

Hey, Richard, Kyle. Thanks for taking our questions and congrats on a strong Q1. The first question, Kyle, can you quantify I can't remember if you did last quarter or not, but can you quantify the tax impact from Colombia that's baked into your 25,000,000 guide thinking about the impact on EBITDA?

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Yes. We didn't quantify it in terms of EBITDA. I think the way I framed it earlier is probably the best way to think about it is that our GGR is growing in Q1, at least in local currency, it grew 55%. It's a little bit lower than that in USD. In April, it's growing a little faster than that actually.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

So we've seen acceleration in GGR growth. But the net revenue was down a little bit in March. It was up for Q1. In April, it's kind of flat net revenue compared to higher than 50% GGR. So that gap is really the impact for us on revenue.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

And we've got obviously some different scenarios higher and lower than that that are built into the guidance for the year. So hopefully that's helpful for you to think about how to frame the impact. I think I said it before, but when this tax goes away, it's obviously a very meaningful driver of growth in revenue and profitability. And certainly, when we compare to these the months that had the tax in 2026.

Mike Hickey
Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

And just to clarify, Kyle, from what I heard, it sounds like it would be we don't know when it's going to end this year, maybe worst case end of the year, but it seems like it would be very unlikely to see a similar tax scheme carry through into '26. It would require another emergency decree, I think, at that point. Is that a fair assessment of what you're thinking?

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Yes, Mike, is Richard. That is an accurate assessment.

Mike Hickey
Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

Okay. Last question from us. You've highlighted before the strength of casino plus OSB. And I think in the most recent data, you're saying that the combo in terms of the player combo participating across both verticals, you get 16 times the GGR from OSB player alone. Curious what percentage, Richard, of your player base does participate in both verticals?

Mike Hickey
Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

Obviously, necessitates the strong sports betting products as well as iGaming. But curious where you are in terms of mix, where it's trending and what strategies you have in place to sort of get that dual player just given how better the economics are? Thanks guys.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Mike. First, if you noticed from that slide in our investor deck, it has improved increased over time that multiple of what you get from the value of a player that plays both casino and sports versus a player that only bets on sports books. So you're hitting on a topic that we're aware of and, actually, by strategy, are designing products around ensuring we get that cross sell. So to answer your question on what we've done, we created a a a mini game lobby.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Not only do we create let me start again.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

We actually created launched some games initially to allow that cross that it become very easy for a player who's betting on sports to be able to play casino games by having a little icon on their on the sports book that lets them open up a a game. And then what we've done more recently is create a game lobby where you have a variety of games there that are easy to navigate between ensuring that you offer optimal number and variety of game casino game types available for players. They may not just wanna play a blackjack. They may wanna play a roulette game or a slot game. And what we're finding is having a greater variety of that has been helpful for us.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

So I think that at the end the day, we haven't really we've never shared our breakout between a number the percentage of players that you asked for. But I will tell you that we obviously recognize the cross sell opportunity and built our product and platform to reduce friction for users to optimize the number of players who will cross sell and play, knowing that's something that a differentiator between us and most of our peers and something that we think we can continue to take advantage of given our focus on the technology to enable this kind of unique play in multiple products at the same time from a single experience.

Mike Hickey
Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

And Richard, is the cross sell, is that starting primarily with iGaming, which is your core product to sports betting? Or are you actually reversing that and bringing in the sports betting and then crossing them to iGaming?

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

It's a little bit of both. But obviously, we also have poker that's driving a lot of the cross sell in Pennsylvania. We're trying to ramp it up. And as we said earlier, we're going to launch multi state poker and share liquidity across multiple states in the future. But I would say that it goes both ways, but there is a lot of sports book to casino, action, and there's a lot of from poker.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

You get a lot of players going over to casino from poker. So it really is a works in in multiple ways through multiple, journeys for players.

Mike Hickey
Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

Nice. Thanks, guys.

Kyle Sauers
Kyle Sauers
CFO at Rush Street Interactive

Thanks, Mike.

Operator

Thank you. There are no further questions in queue. There are no further questions. I'll hand the call back over to Richard Schwartz for concluding remarks.

Richard Schwartz
Richard Schwartz
Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director at Rush Street Interactive

Thank you again for joining us today. We look forward to updating you on our progress when we share our second quarter results in the summer.

Operator

That concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

Executives
Analysts
    • Bernie Mcternan
      Senior Research Analyst at Needham & Company
    • Jordan Bender
      Senior Equity Research Analyst at Citizens Capital Markets and Advisory
    • Analyst
    • Jed Kelly
      Managing Director - Equity Research at Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.
    • David Katz
      Managing Director at Jefferies
    • Chad Beynon
      Managing Director, Analyst at Macquarie Group
    • Joseph Stauff
      Senior Equity Research Analyst at Susquehanna International Group
    • Mike Hickey
      Equity Research Analyst at The Benchmark Company LLC

Key Takeaways

  • Q1 revenue of $262.4 million was up 21% year-over-year with adjusted EBITDA of $33.2 million, nearly doubling prior-year profits.
  • Online casino revenue rose 25% and sports betting grew 11%, while monthly active users expanded 17% in North America and 61% in Latin America.
  • Key US markets delivered strong results with Michigan up 40%, Delaware up 80% and New Jersey up 27%, and internationally Mexico GGR is near 50% growth while Colombia GGR rose 55% despite a 19% VAT tax on deposits that the company absorbed via increased bonuses.
  • The company ended Q1 with $228 million in cash, no debt, repurchased ~734 000 shares under its $50 million buyback program, and reiterated 2025 guidance of $1.45 billion revenue (midpoint, +13% YoY) and $125 million adjusted EBITDA (midpoint, +35% YoY).
  • Regulatory progress in Alberta (Bill 48) and cross-sell enhancements across casino, sports betting and poker products position the business for further market expansions and higher engagement.
A.I. generated. May contain errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Rush Street Interactive Q1 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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