Jumbo Interactive Limited (ASX:JIN) CEO & Executive Director, Mike Veverka discusses FY17 full year results and outlook.

Jessica Amir:
Hello I’m Jessica Amir for the Finance News Network and joining me from Jumbo Interactive Limited (ASX:JIN) is CEO and Executive Director, Mike Veverka. Mike, welcome back to the Finance News Network.

Mike Veverka: Thank you for having me.

Jessica Amir: For those new to Jumbo Interactive, can you give us a background to the company?

Mike Veverka: Jumbo has been selling traditional lottery tickets via the Internet, for over a decade now. About 75 per cent of our sales happen through our app, that’s been the big star over the last few years. In fact it’s just been awarded the 5-Star on the app, in the app store, so it’s doing really really well.

It’s something we’ve been doing for a while, it’s been growing quite nicely. In Australia now, they’re around about 15 per cent of all lottery tickets being sold over the Internet, and that’s growing consistently. When we compare that with other countries like the UK, they’re already at 21 per cent and still growing. Finland is already at 48 per cent and still growing. So there’s a lot of potential in the Australian market for selling lottery tickets online.

Jessica Amir: Zooming in a little bit more to your operations. Can you tell us about the Oz lotteries and the Charity lottery business, and how they’ve been performing?

Mike Veverka: They’ve both been performing really really well. The ticket sales for this year is actually down a little bit, about four per cent. However, on a like-for-like basis, it’s still growing. The reason that it’s down is because there’re some natural fluctuations in jackpots. Some years you get good jackpots, some years you don’t get so many jackpots and last year was one of those years.

However, if we do a comparison of our sales over a number of years, we find that our sales are continually going up. In fact, even if you do a comparison over the half-year, compared to the half-year before, we did $75 million in sales from 16 main jackpots. Where a year ago, we did $72 million in sales from 21 jackpots. So we’re actually selling more from less jackpots, so things are going very well.

And on the Charity front, which is our new addition, that’s going extremely well. Their sales have tripled over the last year, up to $3.8 million. So that’s doing really well too.

Jessica Amir: Now to your agreement with Tatts Group Limited (ASX:TTS). What does that involve?

Mike Veverka: Just a couple of months ago, we signed a new agreement with the Tatts Group (ASX:TTS). So it’s given all our contracts an extension for another five years, up to 2022 and then they go on a continual 12-month rolling basis. So that gives us the ability to continue pushing ahead with our growth. In addition to that, Tatts invested $15 million into Jumbo to make sure that we could still keep on pushing ahead, with our growth. And we’ve also increased our product portfolio so we can now include the popular ‘Set for Life game’, which we expect to have online by Christmas.

Jessica Amir: Turning now to financials. What were some of the highlights from your FY17 results?

Mike Veverka: The highlights from our ‘17 results were a 21 per cent increase in our net profit after tax, to $5.6 million. However, that includes losses that we had in our German business, which we’ve recently shut down. So on a continuing basis, our profit is around about $7.6 million. And as I mentioned before, that’s actually come from a slight decline in our ticket sales and revenue. So we actually managed to increase profits while our total ticket sales and our revenue, declined slightly. So we’re quite happy with the results and it puts us in a good position going forward.

Jessica Amir: And how about the dividend Mike, how does that compare to last year?

Mike Veverka: Dividends up to 8.5 cents for the full year. The deal with the Tatts Group has allowed us to establish an 85 per cent dividend payout ratio, which is definitely a highlight and our strong balance sheet also allows for that. Our balance sheet has strengthened, we currently have about $40 million to $42 million in cash in bank, making our net assets around about $43 million. So we’re in a solid financial position.

Jessica Amir: Last question now. What’s your focus for the next 12 months and longer term?

Mike Veverka: Now that the Tatts deal has been signed, we can really start pushing ahead with our growth. So we’ve got some exciting plans for our marketing, our online marketing. So we’re involving social media a lot more, we’ve just expanded our data analytics team a little bit more. So we’re going to push ahead with that. With all of these new things that we’re doing, we should be able to take our total ticket sales up from the $145 million, which we did last year and start pushing ahead towards the $200 million mark, over the next two or three years.

And that all goes to plan over the next few years, should give us about another $7.5 million in profit after tax, which could effectively double our profit. So that’s our goal for the next two or three years.

Jessica Amir: Mike Veverka from Jumbo Interactive, thanks so much for the update.

Mike Veverka: Thank you very much.


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