Hacksaw reshuffles leadership as revenue growth slows to 12%

Hacksaw supplies games and technology to operators. Its June 2025 prospectus describes fees linked to operators’ gaming revenue: money wagered less player winnings, with further deductions in some contracts. Hacksaw receives an agreed share of that revenue for supplying its content.

The margin compares adjusted operating profit with Hacksaw’s own revenue. It is not the proportion of players’ stakes retained by a casino. EBIT measures earnings before interest and tax; the adjusted figure excludes specified items. These results cover July to September, before the prediction markets platform’s October launch.

The back catalogue helps explain the attraction of the model. In its 2025 prospectus, Hacksaw highlighted Wanted Dead or a Wild, released in 2021, as a title that was still growing in 2024. It said older games could continue generating revenue with relatively low maintenance costs.

An enduring hit can keep earning after much of its development work has been done. The challenge is replenishing that appeal. A catalogue can become larger without every new release contributing as much as the games that established the supplier’s reputation.

Hacksaw reported a 19% increase in average daily rounds played. Management attributed weaker revenue per game to changes in the mix of games and operators. It said it had adjusted the release roadmap towards game styles that had previously performed well, while continuing to develop for a broader range of markets.

Rounds measure activity; supplier revenue also depends on the amounts wagered, winnings and commercial terms. Our reading is that Hacksaw has to improve the contribution of its releases as it widens distribution. Each new operator gives the catalogue another audience, while the games still have to earn their place in that audience’s attention.

Distribution is still expanding. Hacksaw announced a UK slots partnership with Bally’s Intralot on 16 October, followed on 2 November by a Connecticut launch with FanDuel, part of Flutter Entertainment. Both announcements concern casino content. They illustrate the operator relationships on which Hacksaw now wants to build a broader business.

Hacksaw launched its business-to-business (B2B) prediction markets platform on 15 October. Its stated approach is to supply infrastructure to operators, allowing them to retain their brands and customer relationships. The company says it developed the platform using its existing team within its current cost base.

The familiar part is selling technology through operator relationships. The different part is how the product becomes useful. A customer can play a slot without another player taking an opposing position. A peer-to-peer prediction market needs participants willing to take the other side of a trade on acceptable terms.

Hacksaw says its platform is designed to combine participation across its operator network. That could help individual brands offer more trading activity than they could attract alone. The potential advantage grows if operators bring customers interested in the same markets, at the same time.

For an operator, the commercial question becomes whether the shared market offers enough counterparties at useful prices. For Hacksaw, the opportunity would be to make its network more valuable as participation grows. An established sales relationship can secure a conversation; sustained trading requires customers to find reasons to return.

The October announcement did not disclose trading volumes or a separate revenue forecast for Markets. Building within an existing cost base may limit initial development spending, but it cannot establish the eventual cost of running and expanding the service. The group’s 83% quarterly margin gives no established margin for this new activity.

There is also a licensing distinction. Hacksaw says the Malta Gaming Authority extended its business-to-business (B2B) supply licence to Type 3 services for peer-to-peer prediction markets. That announcement concerns its permissions under the Maltese framework.

In Great Britain, the Gambling Commission describes a remote betting intermediary licence as covering the online bringing together of betting parties without liability for their bets. The Malta announcement should not be read as confirmation that Hacksaw’s new service is available to British consumers.

The leadership handover makes practical sense in that context. Gregory will concentrate on the gaming operation, while Cordes develops Markets. In our view, separate attention could help prevent the demands of a new platform from distracting from the game performance that funds expansion. The arrangement still has to prove its value through execution.

Hacksaw’s published objectives include annual revenue growth above 30%, a long-term ambition rather than a promise for each quarter. The company has set itself the task of sustaining strong profitability while finding a faster pace of expansion.

The useful next evidence would be improvement in the commercial contribution of new games, confirmed operators using Markets, and trading and revenue figures for the platform. These would show whether the two leadership priorities are producing stronger content earnings and an additional source of business.

Hacksaw’s high margin gives it a profitable base from which to experiment. The next stage asks it to solve two different problems: keeping games attractive over time and making a shared market active enough to be useful. Its existing operator network offers a starting point for both; the results will depend on what customers do with the products.