Hacksaw AB Financial Results, Revenue and Cash Flow

Latest results: Q3 and nine months 2026

The latest actual interim figures supersede the preliminary update released in October. Both the quarter and year-to-date numbers are consolidated group measures in euros, and the 2026 periods are unaudited interim periods, not full-year outcomes.

The company reported 12% quarterly revenue growth, compared with 23% for the nine-month period. The slower quarterly pace matters. Gaming rounds increased by 19% year on year in Q3, while revenue rose by 12%; management attributed weaker revenue per game partly to a changing mix of games and operators. It adjusted its development roadmap to refocus on styles that had historically performed well. This is management's explanation and expectation, not proof that monetisation must rebound.

For the nine months, the company said constant-currency revenue growth was 27%, compared with 23% as reported. Constant-currency growth removes specified translation effects for comparison; it is not an alternative cash receipt or a separate revenue stream. The results also reflected more content from independent OpenRGS studios, whose commercial economics should not be assumed identical to those of in-house releases.

Profit and operating cash flow were both substantial, although they represent different financial events. EBIT is an accrual-accounting measure before financing items and tax. Profit for the period reflects those additional effects. Operating cash flow adjusts for non-cash items and working-capital movements; it is not simply net profit paid into a bank account.

Revenue and earnings from 2024 to 2025

The audited annual figures provide a consistent historical baseline. They should be compared with each other before drawing conclusions from a partial 2026 period.

Hacksaw's 2025 total revenue increased by approximately 44% year on year. Yet three figures sometimes presented as “revenue” need to be distinguished. Net sales of €197.368m represent the business's recognised external customer sales. Adding approximately €0.112m of other operating income produces total reported revenue of €197.481m, allowing for the rounding of published thousands. Neither should be confused with a geographic entity table that shows €401.295m before eliminating €203.927m of intra-group revenue. Internal invoicing does not create additional external consolidated sales.

This distinction matters particularly in a cross-border technology group. A subsidiary may charge another subsidiary for rights or services, yet that charge is eliminated when the consolidated accounts are prepared. Treating every legal entity's gross turnover as incremental group income would materially overstate the economic scale.

The company's accounting policy explains its principal source of sales: operators pay for the licensed gaming catalogue through sales- and usage-based royalties, calculated with reference to end-user activity and the operator's revenue. It is not a group that retains every bet placed with partner casinos. Operator game GGR, the supplier's contractual share and recognised net sales are different quantities. Our Hacksaw Gaming business model explains that chain without assuming an undisclosed universal royalty rate.

IFRS EBIT versus adjusted EBIT

Adjusted EBIT is an alternative performance measure (APM). It is helpful for understanding the company's presentation of recurring trading performance, but it does not replace the reported operating result. The adjustments differ between annual and interim periods and must be identified rather than silently removed from the accounts.

In FY2025, the adjustments primarily reflected IPO-related costs of €3.986m, as shown in the alternative performance reconciliation. The interim 2026 report describes adjustments including long-term incentive programme bonuses, and for the year-to-date period other items including former CEO severance and IPO-related costs. It would be misleading to apply the full FY2025 adjustment again when calculating Q3 2026.

The headline 83% adjusted Q3 EBIT margin is the adjusted operating profit divided by reported revenue, rounded. It is neither an IFRS margin nor a gross gaming win percentage, and it is certainly not a cash yield on shares. Using reported EBIT instead gives a slightly different operating profitability measure. Both are useful, provided the metric and period are labelled.

Our reading is that Hacksaw's reported operating profitability is genuinely high, rather than solely a product of large adjustments. Nevertheless, the gap between adjusted and statutory figures deserves attention as compensation schemes, corporate events and reporting costs evolve. Comparing only the adjusted percentages can obscure legitimate expenses incurred by shareholders' business.

Cash flow and cash conversion

The strongest financial countercheck is cash generation. During FY2025, Hacksaw reported €152.070m of net cash from operating activities. That is close to, but not the same as, reported EBIT of €157.426m. Differences arise from income-tax payments, non-cash expenses, receivables, accrued income and other working-capital changes.

An accessible cash bridge should distinguish operations, reinvestment and financing:

Our calculation: €152.070m CFO − €6.856m intangible additions − €0.406m tangible additions = €144.808m. This proxy is useful because it shows that operating cash exceeded the specified capital additions by a substantial amount. It is not a standardised FCF metric published by Hacksaw, a forecast of future distributions or the amount left in the bank after dividends, acquisitions and other investments. Other analysts may define free cash flow differently; a fair comparison must identify what is included.

Dividends are financing cash flows, not expenses deducted from EBIT. The company could generate operating cash in one year, pay distributions relating to an earlier period and also hold short-term investments. Those transactions must be followed through the cash-flow and balance-sheet statements rather than compressed into an artificial “cash profit”.

For the nine months to September 2026, operating cash flow was €140.939m. Investing cash outflow was around €9.3m, while financing cash outflow was around €116.7m. During Q2 2026, approximately €115.678m of dividends were paid. These are interim movements, not FY2025 numbers. They show that substantial cash returns continued, but the precise use and timing of cash cannot be inferred solely from a comparison of two EBIT figures.

There is a second distinction between paying a dividend and authorising a buyback. On 3 November 2026, the board announced a programme permitting repurchases of up to €20m of shares. An up to amount is a maximum authority, not evidence that €20m had already been bought or that it appeared as an outflow in the September 2026 cash-flow statement. Actual repurchases require their own transaction evidence and reporting dates. Shareholder-market implications belong on the separate Hacksaw shares and outlook page.

Balance sheet and liquidity

The cash balance is particularly easy to misread. At 31 December 2025, the audited annual report showed €133.180m of cash and cash equivalents, but only €26.608m was cash and bank balances. A further €106.572m consisted of short-term treasury bills, treated as cash equivalents because the relevant investments had short maturities.

This composition matters. Treasury bills are financial instruments rather than ordinary deposits, although their short maturity supports their accounting classification as cash equivalents. It would be equally wrong to describe the group as holding just €26.608m of liquidity or to suggest the entire €133.180m was cash physically in bank accounts.

At 30 September 2026, consolidated cash and cash equivalents were €148.192m. The later interim statement gives an updated total, but the 2025 breakdown should not be copied forward and presented as the September composition without a matching 2026 note. A larger closing total does not mean every euro is unrestricted for distribution; working-capital requirements, liabilities and commitments still matter.

The annual report includes lease obligations, trade payables and other liabilities. A company may have no conventional interest-bearing bank borrowing and still owe money under leases, taxes, supplier contracts or accrued compensation. Cash coverage and solvency cannot be judged by the bank balance alone. Equally, treasury instruments can carry counterparty or interest-rate exposure, even when held for short periods.

Development investment and accounting quality

Hacksaw's technology model requires ongoing product development. Some qualifying development expenditure is recognised as an intangible asset rather than fully expensed when paid. That is not inherently aggressive accounting: it reflects the treatment of expenditures meeting the applicable recognition criteria. But it does affect the timing of reported profit and cash spending.

Capitalised development can appear as a cash investment while the related income-statement cost emerges through amortisation over time. The group's reported policy includes a four-year amortisation period for relevant capitalised development. That means a fast-growing development pipeline can create differences between operating profit, cash expenditure and the expense ultimately recognised in later periods. The exact asset category and useful life remain important; one should not impose four years indiscriminately on every intangible asset.

In FY2025, purchased or capitalised intangible additions of €6.856m appeared in the investing cash-flow context used above. The nine-month 2026 period also involved development and other investing outflows, but a nine-month number cannot be compared naively with a twelve-month figure as though their periods were identical. Nor does own work capitalised become additional sales from third-party customers: its presentation in the profit-and-loss statement serves a different accounting purpose.

This is why we put the CFO-minus-capital-additions bridge beside the EBIT table. If development spend grows faster than revenue, a high operating margin alone may provide an incomplete picture of reinvestment requirements. Conversely, a business whose existing titles remain productive may generate cash while creating new releases. The relevant evidence is the pattern over several periods, not a single amortisation or capitalisation line.

Geography, tax and foreign exchange: reading the notes

Hacksaw's audited report offers two distinct geographical perspectives on the same external net sales. One table groups the revenue by the location of the group company invoicing the customer; another relates it to the end user's geographical region. Both reconcile to FY2025 net sales of €197.368m, but the locations should not be interpreted interchangeably.

For example, €142.380m was attributed to the Isle of Man in the company-location presentation. This does not say that Isle of Man residents generated €142.380m of gaming activity. Operator entities may be incorporated or invoiced in one place while supplying players in many others. Similarly, broad regional buckets cannot support an invented UK-only, Brazil-only or single-operator revenue figure. The relevant licensing and market perimeter is addressed in Hacksaw markets and licences.

Tax rates require the same care. Hacksaw reported an effective consolidated tax rate of approximately 6.3% in FY2025, compared with 5.3% in FY2024. This is the group's effective rate on its reported accounting results across entities and jurisdictions. It is not interchangeable with a commonly cited approximately 5% Maltese effective tax outcome or the rate applying to any single subsidiary. Differences in taxable income, relief, location and period can affect the consolidated tax charge.

Foreign exchange also influences the accounts. FY2025 net financial items of −€5.066m included approximately €5.832m of foreign-exchange losses. Those financial items help explain why net profit is not EBIT. They do not mean that foreign exchange reduced annual sales by precisely that amount; the classification is different. Likewise, constant-currency revenue growth in Q3 and 9M 2026 is an analytical growth comparison, not a cash-flow substitute.

Receivables and contract assets are another part of revenue quality. The annual report showed €10.082m of trade receivables and €20.031m of contract assets at the end of 2025. Contract assets reflect earned consideration not yet invoiced under the relevant arrangements; they are not identical to cash. The group also reports expected-credit-loss allowances, reinforcing why revenue recognition and cash collection should be read together.

What the numbers do and do not establish

The audited FY2025 revenue growth, strong EBIT and operating cash generation provide credible evidence of a profitable B2B supplier. The latest interim period indicates that this continued into 2026. Yet at least three constraints remain when assessing financial resilience.

First, customer concentration is economically relevant. The ten largest operator customers generated 44% of FY2025 net sales; the two largest contributed 13% and 11% of group revenue individually, compared with 20% and 16% for the two largest customers in 2024. Dependence on the largest individual accounts had moderated, but a significant fraction of sales still depended on a relatively small number of commercial relationships. This is distinct from the company's separate Q3 2026 disclosure that ten games accounted for 52% of content GGR: one measure concerns customers and annual sales, the other games and quarterly operator-level activity.

Second, portfolio expansion does not necessarily produce proportionate revenue. Q3 2026 rounds grew faster than revenue, and management's game/operator-mix explanation deserves testing against future reporting. Third, profitability, liquidity and capital returns represent related but different questions. The €144.808m FY2025 cash proxy is our calculation, not distributable earnings or a guarantee of recurring cash generation.

Our assessment: Hacksaw's unusually high margin is meaningful because it is supported by strong operating cash flow, but its quality is better evaluated alongside capitalised development, working capital, concentrated B2B customer revenues and actual dividends. The financial evidence does not support an invented share-price target or a simple “cash equals profit” narrative. Those seeking the wider business dependencies can continue to Hacksaw Gaming risks and opportunities.

Documentary basis: audited Hacksaw AB Annual Report 2025 (including consolidated statements, revenue notes, taxation, liquidity and financial risks); Hacksaw AB Interim Report January to September 2026, issued 3 November 2026; issuer's share-repurchase announcement of 3 November 2026.