Inspired Entertainment (INSE) Q3 2026 Earnings Call: Margin Reaches 46%, Guidance Cut

Key Takeaways

• Q3 2026 EBITDA margin reached 46%, up 900 basis points year over year and 1,100 basis points from 35% in Q2 2025.
• Adjusted for divestitures, restructuring, the UK remote gaming duty increase and Brazil’s shutdown, trailing 12-month EBITDA grew 12% over nine months, or approximately 15% annualized.
• Year-to-date free cash flow was $17.6 million, representing approximately 22% conversion of EBITDA.
• Interactive segment EBITDA increased 20% before the UK tax impact. US gross gaming revenue rose more than 30% year over year in Q3, while Italy grew more than 50% year to date.
• Management lowered the bottom end of full-year guidance to $109 million because of Brazil and is conservatively assuming the market remains closed.
• Senior secured net leverage ended Q3 at approximately 2.8x, below the 5x covenant level, with more than $46 million of covenant EBITDA headroom.

Key Financial Data

Business and Operating Performance

Interactive remained the principal growth driver despite the UK remote gaming duty doubling on April 1, 2026. October was the segment’s strongest month on record. US GGR increased more than 30% year over year in Q3, outpacing the company’s other major markets, while Italy was the fastest-growing market with year-to-date growth above 50%.

Inspired Entertainment said its UK Interactive market share exceeds 11%. The company plans to expand through bespoke titles, derivatives of established game families and products targeting player segments where its portfolio is underrepresented. Bee Reel’s first game is in regulatory review, and management expects the studio to produce approximately one additional game per month once fully operational.

Gaming machine performance improved across the company’s three largest UK betting-shop customers as closures were concentrated in less profitable locations and play shifted to remaining shops. In Greece, the Slant cabinet drove machine performance to its highest level in years. Nearly one-third of the Greek estate still requires cabinet upgrades.

North American machine performance improved in Illinois and Canada. Inspired recently began a trial in Manitoba, its third Canadian province, and received its first order related to VLT expansion into Chicago.

Virtual Sports launched with FanDuel and entered a fourth US lottery market through Massachusetts. FanDuel launched with five sports, compared with three currently offered through BetMGM. The company also plans additional eInstant iLottery releases in 2027 and is moving into the US Class III market through Gaming Arts.

The company continues to reduce its dependence on the UK. Non-UK revenue as a percentage of total revenue has doubled since 2023, supported by growth in North America and Greece.

Management Guidance

Management reduced the low end of full-year guidance to $109 million because of the Brazil shutdown. Its planning assumption is that Brazil remains closed, although management expects greater regulatory clarity by the end of 2026 or in Q1 2027.

Under that assumption, management expects 2027 performance to increase only modestly from 2026 because the business must first replace the lost contribution from Brazil. The company described this as shifting its growth targets out by approximately one year, with the prior 2027 trajectory moving into 2028.

The UK machine gaming duty will rise from 20% to 25% in April 2027. Management estimates a $2 million to $3 million impact beginning that month, although it expects game development and other measures to mitigate the pressure over time.

The previous 2026 free cash flow conversion target of 20% will be lowered modestly due to Brazil, but management did not provide a revised figure. The company expects free cash flow to continue increasing and leverage to decline.

Risks and Watch Items

• Brazil’s online gaming market remains shut and its reopening timeline is uncertain. The impact is concentrated primarily in Virtual Sports, while the company’s Brazilian iGaming business was relatively small.
• A sports-only reopening in Brazil could support Virtual Sports, but management emphasized that the regulatory outcome remains unclear.
• Higher UK taxes remain a near-term headwind. The remote gaming duty has already doubled, while the machine gaming duty increase begins in April 2027.
• Growth depends partly on further US iGaming legalization, which management described as a significant opportunity but without providing a timeline.
• The company intends to consider refinancing its private credit facility after prepayment penalties expire in June 2027. Management also expects an initial interest-rate step-down during the first half of 2027.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

Management characterized the UK machine gaming duty increase as manageable. It expects the initial $2 million to $3 million impact to be reduced over time through stronger game performance and other mitigation measures.

FanDuel’s Virtual Sports launch was still in an early technical phase at the time of the call. Management expected migration into the sportsbook within one to two weeks and said four to six weeks of operating data would be needed before assessing engagement.

Bee Reel will expand content capacity and target underserved player categories across North America and other markets. The first title is under regulatory review and the second is nearly complete. Management also highlighted exclusive content relationships with DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Hard Rock and Fanatics.

On capital allocation, Executive Chairman Lorne Weil said the immediate and intermediate-term priority would be share repurchases. Management also continues to evaluate debt repayment, refinancing and selected acquisition opportunities as leverage declines.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Hello, and welcome to the Inspired Entertainment Third Quarter 2026 Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note that today's event is being recorded.

Before we begin, please refer to the company's forward-looking statements that appear in the third quarter 2026 earnings press release and in the accompanying slide presentation, both of which are available in the Investors section of the company's website at www.inseinc.com. These also apply to today's conference call. Management will be making forward-looking statements within the meaning of United States securities laws.

These statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs and are subject to various risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such statements. For a discussion on these risks and uncertainties, please refer to the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

During today's call, the company will discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in today's earnings release and slide presentation, which are both available on the website.

With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Lorne Weil, the company's Executive Chairman. Mr. Weil, please go ahead.

A. Weil

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter conference call. Per usual, CEO, Brooks Pierce and I will be making prepared remarks; and CFO, Craig Wilson; and VP of Corporate Development, Eric Carrera, are available to assist with Q&A. As anyone who even casually follows us, either -- or the broader gaming industry, knows, the news has been pretty well saturated with stories concerning regulatory changes in the U.K. and Brazil. In the U.K., the machine gaming duty was increased from 20% to 25% effective next April, following the doubling of the remote gaming duty effective last April. And for now at least, the online gaming industry in Brazil is shuttered and in limbo, which, by the way, was the primary reason our EBITDA in the quarter was a little below consensus.

Fortunately, in parallel, our platform has been strengthening in pretty much every dimension. EBITDA margins continue to improve, having reached 46% in the third quarter, while both capital intensity and leverage are declining with the growth of our digital business and overall growth momentum is building. At the same time, there have been so many moving parts, both internal to the company and within the regulatory environment, that is difficult to appreciate the growth momentum.

As you can see in Slide 5, trailing 12-month EBITDA at the end of the third quarter of 2026 was essentially flat to trailing 12 months at the end of full year 2025. However, in the interim, we divested the holiday park business and restructured the pub business, which together reduced our labor force by 1/3, and we absorbed a doubling of the U.K. remote gaming duty as well as a short but meaningful period of Brazil shutdown, as I referenced a moment ago. Adjusting for these developments, as shown on the slide, yields a like-for-like EBITDA growth in trailing 12-month EBITDA of 12% over the 9-month period or about 15% annualized, which we feel is indicative of the growth momentum that's building in the company.

In a few minutes, Brooks will go more deeply into the principal growth drivers, including interactive market share gains, new markets and customers for Virtuals and the resilience of our retail business. Comparing the third quarter of '26 to the third quarter of '25, we saw a 900 basis point increase in EBITDA margin despite the tax increases. And adjusting for the U.K. tax impact, like-for-like revenue increase of 9% and EBITDA grew at about twice that pace, more or less comparable to the 12-month figures we looked at a moment ago. Year-to-date free cash flow was $17.6 million, representing free cash flow conversion of about 22% of EBITDA.

Lastly, because of the Brazil shutdown, we're reducing the low end of our full year guidance to $109 million. Before I hand it over to Brooks, I think it's worth taking another look at the evolution of our EBITDA margins. Over the last 6 quarters, we've increased EBITDA margin by 1,100 basis points from 35% in the second quarter of 2025 to 46% in the third quarter of 2026. As noted in the slide, we achieved this increase through a combination of divestment and restructuring of our lowest margin businesses together with above-average growth in our highest margin digital business.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Brooks to talk in more detail about the performance of the business.

Brooks Pierce

Okay. Thanks, Lorne. As usual, I'll take a slightly deeper dive into the key drivers and metrics in each reporting segment. I agree with Lorne that there are many moving parts, particularly on the regulatory front. We have clarity now on the machine gaming duty starting in April of 2027, but Brazil and the timing of any changes is still yet to be determined. Nevertheless, we're encouraged by the progress that we're seeing across the business. So this slide illustrates the performance of our gaming machines in our 3 biggest markets, the U.K., Greece and North America.

In the U.K., shop closures have generally been concentrated among less profitable locations. So what you're seeing is per machine performance has improved across our 3 biggest betting shop customers. The remaining shops are also improving partly because play has been redistributed. We're particularly proud of our machines and our content in Greece, where we've widened our lead over existing competitors. Our newest Slant cabinet is performing so well that it's driving our overall numbers to their highest level in years. Almost 1/3 of our estate still needs upgrading to the latest cabinets, so we expect this trend to continue.

We're also encouraged by the improved performance in Illinois and with our Canadian customers, and we've recently installed cabinets on trial in Manitoba, which is our third province now. And we're confident our content will resonate with players there as it has in both Saskatchewan and Alberta.

Moving over to Slide 9. Our Interactive segment continues to perform well, even though the U.K. remote gaming duty doubled on April 1 of this year. As this slide shows, segment EBITDA grew 20% before the impact of the U.K. tax increase. Monthly results in the third quarter were slightly mixed. August was affected somewhat by the World Cup in prior months, but we are encouraged by the bounce back we saw in September and October was the best month we've ever had on record, even eclipsing any individual month in the first quarter, which was before the U.K. tax increase. We saw growth in key markets like North America, the U.K. and Greece. The largest contributor to overall growth was the U.S., where our GGR grew over 30% year-over-year in the third quarter, significantly outpacing broader U.S. iGaming market growth.

And Italy was our fastest-growing market with growth exceeding 50% year-to-date. We think this demonstrates the strength of our content and our ability to gain market share across major markets. We're also excited that the first game from our newest studio, Bee Reel, is already out now for regulatory approval.

Moving to Slide 10. As we've mentioned previously, there's nothing that would drive this segment more than additional U.S. states approving iGaming. In the meantime, we continue to gain share in all of our key markets. Outside the U.K., where our share is currently more than 11%, we're confident that we can grow our share from a combination of more bespoke games, more derivatives of our successful game theme families and a focus on player segments where we either don't participate or are under-indexed.

On Slide 11, we stress, look, at our core, we're a content company, and that's how we will differentiate ourselves across all 3 segments. We develop games for online players or retail players and for the crossover between the 2 as well as independently for each segment. This gives us what I consider the most swings at the plate. We've also made our mark with seasonal games. October's results show the power of Halloween-themed games, and we now move into the Thanksgiving-themed and Christmas-themed, and this is historically our highest GGR quarter of the year.

Variety matters, too. We showed some products at G2E in the Virtual space. Our first archived soccer product, Real Play Football goes live this year and a Golden Horses derivative of our successful virtual horse racing product should add appeal to a product that has been in the market for years.

Moving to Slide 12. One of our goals has always been to become a more global company and to rely less on the U.K. market. And as the chart shows, we've doubled the percentage of our non-U.K. revenue since 2023, and we expect this trend to continue as key growth markets like North America and Greece become bigger contributors. The pipeline of opportunities outside the U.K. continues to grow on a daily basis.

So speaking of growth, we see many opportunities to grow the business despite the U.K. higher taxes and the uncertainty in Brazil. Our digital business remains a key driver with the highest margins, the biggest cash flow contribution and the most opportunity. We still believe it's a matter of when, not if additional states will be added for iGaming and nothing would be more meaningful for us and for some of the larger states to approve and deploy. We also see a number of opportunities for our Virtual Sports business in the U.S. We're excited that we've gone live now in our fourth U.S. lottery market in Massachusetts with our horse racing product. And we launched our Virtuals product with FanDuel. FanDuel is the largest sports operator in the U.S., which obviously gives us the sense that this is the best chance for success for this product.

Moving to some kind of new products. We expect to launch additional eInstant games in the iLottery space in 2027, a key opportunity for us to leverage our content development skills in another channel. We expect clarity in Illinois on the expansion of VLTs in the Chicago market. And I'm happy to say that we took actually our first order today, as a matter of fact, for an expansion into Chicago. So we're starting to see that opportunity manifest itself, certainly some in this quarter, but probably more so in 2027.

The last thing is we're excited to move our content into the U.S. Class III market through a unique relationship with Gaming Arts, and we showed that product at G2E for many of you that were out there. We're also fielding a number of inquiries in the lottery systems market following the successful launch of our cloud-based system built from scratch in the Dominican Republic. We have plenty of opportunities to fill the gap created by the U.K. tax increase. Between the U.K. tax and potential Brazil headwinds, we basically pushed our targets out by a year.

Even so, we continue to improve our EBITDA margins and cash flow, reduce our leverage ratio and build a large pipeline of opportunities across our segments and markets. Most of our business, as you would know, is recurring revenue under long-term contracts, and we're making progress on our strategy to increase the share of revenue and EBITDA from our existing segments.

With that, I'll hand it back over to Lorne.

A. Weil

Thanks, Brooks, for a great deep dive into each of the businesses. Slide 15 summarizes the 3-year period 2025 to 2027. This is a slide that we've been looking at now for the last several quarters. And in this case, it's assuming that the shutdown in Brazil stays in effect. Brazil in and of itself has not been a growth market in the last couple of years. So we don't expect that the shutdown of Brazil will compromise the organic growth profile of the company, per se. But what it does do is shifts the growth curve 1 year to the right in effect. So we expect 2027 will be up only modestly from 2026 because, again, we're assuming that Brazil will stay shut down, and we need to first make that up before we can generate any growth.

And then '28 will look like '27 and had otherwise been projected to be and so forth. Notwithstanding the shift in the growth trajectory, free cash flow is projected to continue increasing along with the decline in leverage. With regards to free cash flow conversion, our previous target of 20% for 2026 will be lowered a little bit because of the impact of Brazil. Finally, let me make a comment about debt and covenant issues in response to some questions that we've been getting.

At the end of the third quarter, our senior secured net leverage was about 2.8x, well below the covenant leverage of 5, giving us over $46 million of covenant EBITDA headroom. As further noted on the slide, we can repay our private credit facility that matures in June 2030 without any prepayment penalty anytime from June 2027. Since our EBITDA, leverage ratio, and cash flow have all improved meaningfully since we put this facility in place in 2025, the possibility of refinancing prior to maturity is something we will be looking at very carefully. I should also mention with respect to this facility that we expect sometime during the first half of 2027 that we will be achieving the first step down in our rate on this facility.

And with that, operator, can we please turn the program over to Q&A.

Operator

[Operator Instructions]

Your first question comes from the line of Matthew Maus with B. Riley Securities.

Question-and-Answer Session

Matthew Maus

So Weil, Wilson, and Pierce, the strongest quarter, gross win per unit per day were both up double digits percentage-wise. So as U.K. operators absorb the higher machine duty, wondering how our revenue share conversation is going? And does that performance help?

Brooks Pierce

In terms of our revenue share, is it -- you mean the our contract rates, is that what you mean by the question?

Matthew Maus

Just in relation to -- yes, more in relation to how U.K. operators as they're absorbing the higher machine duty, how that changes things.

Brooks Pierce

Yes. Look, I think it's common knowledge. You've probably read plenty of press that nobody was happy about the fact that the tax increased at all. There was obviously a lot of conversation about why that shouldn't be the case. But I could say on the other -- the flip side of that, there had been some discussion that it could increase as much as 20%, and it actually only increased 5%. So I think it's -- I don't think anybody is happy about it from an operator perspective nor are we. But we do feel that it's manageable, and we have plans to be able to hopefully mitigate as much of this as possible.

Matthew Maus

Yes. So kind of as a follow-up to that, machine games duty going up. Just wondering like how much do you think you can reasonably offset and what are the main levers there? I think back a few months ago, you said you could reasonably offset the increase in the duty. Just wondering what the levers there are and how much you think you can.

Brooks Pierce

Yes. So I think now that we know what the percentage is, based on our estimates, we believe that it's going to be an impact to us of between $2 million and $3 million starting in April, so not a full year next year. But we also believe, and we've had history of the changes in tax rates in the U.K. that over the course of time between game development and other things, we'll find a way to mitigate it. So we look at this as a short-term headwind starting in 2027, but we're obviously think that we'll be able to mitigate that over the course of time.

Matthew Maus

Great. Last one for me. It's great seeing FanDuel's Virtual Sports offerings live. Just wondering if you could give more color there. How many states does it cover? How does early engagement compare with BetMGM's integrated sportsbook?

Brooks Pierce

Yes. Unfortunately, it's too early in the process. They just went live within the last week or 2, and it's really more in a proof mode, making sure the tech is all working. It will migrate over to the sportsbook probably here in the next week or 2. And then I think we probably need 4 or 6 weeks for it to bed down to have some sense. But we've seen nice progress with BetMGM, and we would expect because FanDuel is substantially bigger from a sports betting standpoint. And so we would hope that this will be a catalyst to get some good growth out of the Virtual Sports business. And FanDuel is going to launch with more sports. BetMGM right now only has 3. FanDuel is launching with 5. So we're obviously -- it's taken a long time to get us there, but we're certainly hopeful and encouraged that we finally got it done.

Matthew Maus

Yes, great to see that. Hoping to see it as a catalyst for 2027.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Will Yager

This is Will on for Ryan. First, I wanted to ask on maybe guidance in Brazil. I know you guys called out a $3 million revenue impact there after the ban went into effect. And I know the flow-through on EBITDA was a little bit higher there. So curious the revisions there, maybe if there's anything else included and which segment specifically that's impacting?

Brooks Pierce

No. I think, look, as we've talked about, Lorne and I talked about, it's a very fluid situation. I think we're taking the most conservative posture here, assuming that the ban doesn't get lifted, but I think we have lots of reasons to think that, that might not be the case. But in terms of the impact to us, it's predominantly our Virtual Sports business. Our iGaming business in Brazil was relatively small. And I think we talked a little bit about what the impact was both on the revenue side and kind of the EBITDA flow-through on the last call, and nothing has really changed from that.

Will Yager

And maybe a quick follow-up there. 2027 guidance revised too, we'd assume primarily for Brazil. Just curious maybe if there's a chance the market comes back online maybe for sports betting like we've heard about what uplift that might provide? And then maybe as another follow-up to that, if it is -- we're a few months from now, and it seems that the ban is going to stick. Do you have any cost-saving measures or anything you can undergo there?

Brooks Pierce

Yes. Look, we're obviously hopeful. And certainly, we have people on the ground there every day kind of working on this. And so we're hopeful that it will return. I would say in terms of the impact, certainly, if the ban stays, yes, we do have ways to be able to mitigate some costs that we will do. So the -- what we've kind of guided to $1 million a month will obviously be mitigated if the ban doesn't get lifted. So -- and in terms of -- there's obviously been conversation that it may be sports only and online casino would still stay banned, but they allow sports. I mean you could certainly make an argument that could potentially help us in terms of Virtual Sports.

So unfortunately, for us, as you can imagine, with this not being clear, we're just kind of forecasting what we can forecast. And -- but I think it will come to a head. I think there'll be a decision, if not before the end of the year, certainly in the first quarter. It's my view, at least.

Operator

Your last question comes from the line of Chad Beynon with Macquarie Capital.

Chad Beynon

Brooks, I wanted to ask about the Bee Reel studio. You've had a lot of nice success gaining market share. In the U.S., a lot of operators are talking about some decelerating growth, but because you're taking share, I don't think a little of the overall TAM shrinking near term really matters for you guys. So as you continue to take share, how is this studio a part of that thesis? And are you being asked to do more exclusive games? Or anything around the number of titles or timing of releases would be helpful.

Brooks Pierce

Yes. That's a good question. Yes, we certainly have, as part of the plan for the studio to develop games for the North American market. But as I also said in my remarks, we're also looking at some of the areas from a -- kind of really from a player behavior aspect where we either don't serve them or are under-indexed, and that could be in the U.S. or that could be in other markets. So what it really does is gives us -- we're assuming when it gets fully up to speed, this is going to be able to put an output of another game per month, which will increase our capacity pretty nicely. So whether it ends up being more U.S., I think that's still kind of to be determined. First game is out at GLI. The second game is pretty much done. So we'll hope to hit the ground running with the studio.

And yes, in terms of your -- the second part or third part of your question about exclusive, yes, I mean, look, we're -- we have a very good relationship with -- here's a perfect example. Rush Street just told us in October, we were their second biggest supplier, which is obviously great and gratifying for us. So we try to navigate exclusives across all the biggest operators in the best and fairest way possible. But as you know, Chad, I mean, there's tons of content out there, and it's really kind of gauged by how yours does relative to the competition. So we certainly -- we have a lot of exclusives with DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Hard Rock, Fanatics, you kind of name it. So it's kind of the confluence of all of that stuff.

Chad Beynon

Great. And then with more certainty around some of these unknowns that we've talked about here this afternoon, how does that adjust your thinking in terms of capital allocation, share repurchases or maybe expanding into M&A with leverage coming down under 3x?

A. Weil

I was wondering when you were going to ask that, Chad. I thought you were about wrapped up with the other question. But thank you for asking it.

Chad Beynon

You know your analysts wait too well.

A. Weil

Well, particularly the ones we've known as long as we've known you, Chad. But had you not asked it, I was going to volunteer it anyway as a closing remark. So in our minds, in theory, we're always thinking about share repurchase debt repayment. We mentioned that we're going to be getting a step down anyway in our rate sometime in the first half and acquisitions, which, again, given our leverage right now and general valuations, we're looking at a couple of things quite carefully. But I think it goes without saying that given where our shares are trading now for at least the immediate and intermediate future are overwhelming, emphasis is going to be on share repurchase.

I think we're probably barely -- given where the EBITDA is going to be in 2026 and the minimum it will be in 2027 if we don't get some turnaround in Brazil, I don't -- we're barely trading at 4x EBITDA compared to like 7 as an average for suppliers in the gaming industry. So we're going to be buying it as aggressively as we ever have, and we'll just see where we get as we move through the fourth quarter.

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back to Lorne Weil, Executive Chairman, for closing remarks.

A. Weil

Thank you, operator, and thanks, everyone, for participating at this fairly late time in the afternoon. I think we're pretty happy with the third quarter, taking all of the group of objectives that we're trying to achieve simultaneously, profitability, cash flow, leverage, growth and so forth. We're excited about the rest of the year and next year, and we look forward to speaking to you all in a quarter or so. Thank you.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.