Light and Wonder has announced Matthiue Labbat as the new Chief Executive Officer of SciPlay, the supplier’s social casino division.
Labbat, who spent seven years at Product Madness, Aristocrat’s mobile division, will be taking over from SciPlay’s long-term leader, Joshua Wilson, who departed when his contract ended on 30 October.
Speaking on the company’s third-quarter investor call, Light & Wonder’s CEO, Matt Wilson, emphasised that the division remains a key part of the company despite a 12% downturn in revenue year-on-year.
Wilson said: “We think it’s an important part of our portfolio. It’s another great way for us to sweat the investments in game content that we spend, and those investments are ramping. So an obvious way for us to redeploy that.
“And then the ability to A/B test with a B2C business gives us the leverage points to make even better games and make the ecosystem even better.”
Light and Wonder’s chief also pointed to the overall softness in the wider social casino free-to-play market and the fact that many sweepstakes operators remain in markets, even after they have been deemed illegal by gaming regulators.
Overall, Light and Wonder reported a 2% decline in revenue to $824m, but profits increased 7% to $163m compared to the same period last year.
Speed key to overcoming headwinds
The supplier is confident in its ability to transition to new markets as the studio continues to navigate regulatory headwinds and a tough taxation era for the iGaming sector on several fronts.
Wilson emphasised that the company’s market share remains ‘resilient’ in the UK amid the transition to a new 40% remote gaming duty rate in the market, which came into effect in April.
Regulatory turbulence wasn’t limited to the UK, with the studio also being forced to disable its content in Brazil in response to President Lula da Silva’s betting ban.
Wilson said: “We remain confident in our iGaming roadmap and expect this segment to continue to contribute steadily to our growth.”
Light and Wonder reported iGaming growth of 13% year-on-year to $97m, primarily driven by its performance in North America and the growth of its partner network.
“Alberta is ramping up following its July opening, and we expect the country to be a meaningful contributor to growth, supported by continued momentum in Ontario and other provinces looking to legalise iGaming,” added Wilson.
“The beauty of our business is that we build our content once and deploy it globally, so we are ready to move quickly as new markets open.”
Light and Wonder previously set a target of achieving $2bn adjusted EBITDA by 2028, but Wilson warned that it will be a ‘long and winding road’ to get to this figure, as adjusted EBITDA for the quarter exhibited a small increase to $383m.
He said: “I’ll be blunt that we haven’t performed to the expectations this year, both internally and externally. As a management team, led by me, we believe in doing big, bold, ambitious things. There’s a long and winding road and multiple pathways to get there.
“SciPlay is performing a little less than we expected, and systems are the same. But gaming operations and Grover [Gaming] and iGaming are ahead of where we expected them to be. We refresh our plans every year, and so we’re in the process of doing that again.”