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hat products does the company plan to showcase at G2E? What are attendants going to find at the company’s booth this time around? What does this return to in-person events mean for AGS?
After a long hiatus, we’re excited to be back at G2E and look forward to meeting with our customers and partners in-person. One key message, overarching all our product categories, is that AGS is evolving into a next-level gaming supplier, and the depth and breadth of this year’s product lineup will really underscore that theme. Another theme, more specific to G2E, is that AGS is all about the games. So what customers will find when they come into our booth is a fun, relaxed, very “AGS” ambiance which aligns with our unique corporate culture, and serves as the perfect backdrop for our high-quality product showcase.
Visitors to our booth will see our new games really come to life with stunning configurations for our premium cabinets in our slot products portfolio – the Starwall x Orion and Orion Curve Premium. We’re introducing a bunch of entertaining new characters in our game titles, such as a dancing Tiki guy in our Prize Stacks game family – as well as vibrant tigers and Samuaris in our Epic Reels Japanese-art style games Muoko and Musha – all of which will come alive on the Starwall platform.
We’re excited to show customers our new player-selectable multi-denom content for Orion Curve Premium in Mega Boost games Wheel Charge and WheelCharred. And we’re confident that they’ll also love Wild Catch, which highlights AGS’ use of VSync technology to create a community-style experience across our Orion Curve Premium games as sea life floats from one game to the next.
As for our Table Products lineup, we’re looking forward to showcasing the industry’s best table game progressives, including the award-winning Bonus Spin Xtreme, which can connect and provide a single progressive jackpot for all table games. For this year’s show, customers will see how AGS has expanded the player universe for this product by allowing integration onto community-style games like roulette, craps, and baccarat – a first-ever of its kind. We’re also excited to introduce our second card shuffler – the Pax S, a single-deck packet shuffler for specialty games.
As we leave behind 2020, a very challenging year for the industry, the company posted records in domestic gaming operations and daily EGM revenue. What explains these achievements? How do they position the company for future growth and operations?
We announced earnings for the second quarter of 2021 in August, when most casinos in North America were back to being fully open and players were eager to get back to live casino gaming entertainment, especially as vaccine programs rolled out and casinos relaxed social distancing restrictions. That, coupled with the success of some of our newer products, including the Starwall x Orion, Orion Curve Premium, year-over-year gains in our interactive business, and continued performance of our industry-leading table progressives, helped drive strong recurring revenue. We continue to add more compelling game content – to both the land-based and online environments – and remain committed to evolving and enhancing our product lines to meet our customer’s needs today and in the future.
With casinos reopening all over the world, how is the demand for land-based products such as slots and cabinets developing? Are gambling venues willing to renew their gaming options? What are the main requests from clients?
As casinos continue to reopen, we’re seeing demand across all of our product categories as players return in earnest, looking to get back to the live casino gaming entertainment. We also see online play continue to be quite strong, as many players were introduced to (or gravitated towards) online gaming during the early part of the pandemic.
We’re finding many operators looking to refresh their floors with attractive slot cabinets, vibrant game art, and unique and eye-catching configurations, such as games featuring curved monitors, and which are attractively merchandised with video displays and game-synchronized content.
Which markets would you describe as a priority for the company at the moment, and how will the company secure presence in them?
We do business in most regulated, legal markets in the United States, Canada, and Mexico, including the Class II, Class III, and historical horse racing (“HHR”) markets. Now that we have expanded our premium slot product offering, we expect our business to grow in more Class III markets, where there is a lot of whitespace for us.
At the same time, we are focusing on developing a larger library of Class II games and releasing them near-simultaneously to the release of the same games for the Class III market, and we continue to grow our HHR library as that market expands. We expect to be able to deliver a much broader product offering to all tribal and commercial markets.
In addition, our interactive business, which encompasses social and real-money gaming, is currently penetrating the North American online market and providing real-money games to operators in Michigan, Ontario, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Quebec. And in Tables, there is so much greenfield for us, but right now we’re very focused on penetrating California, Maryland, Michigan, Connecticut, and Florida, to name some of the top markets.
What have been the latest launches in terms of slots and platforms, and in which ways do they innovate over the company’s classics? Moreover, AGS has also been developing its online solutions, with a growing library of iGaming content. How would you assess the development of this vertical?
Last year we launched our Starwall x Orion merchandising package. It’s an exciting combination of our stunning Orion Portrait platform with a dramatic, first-of-its-kind large format freestanding video display combining hundreds of LED tiles and synchronized to gameplay. We launched Starwall x Orion with two upgraded extensions of popular AGS brands – Golden Wins Deluxe and Jade Wins Deluxe.
And this year, we introduced our Orion Curve Premium platform to the market, and performance has been very encouraging. This platform features our 49-inch LCD Ultra HD 4K curved portrait display packaged with a 360-degree circular video topper. In 2021, we are taking these premium offerings to a whole new level by introducing new in-line configurations of both Starwall x Orion and Orion Curve Premium to give operators more flexibility, social distancing options, and that theater-like gameplay experience that players love.
We’re also very excited about the growth of AGS Interactive business. Our focus with this business has been penetrating the North America online markets as they open, keeping our momentum in Europe and Latin America, and continuing to grow our library of proven AGS retail content.
