Mr Green CEO reveals the firm's 2.0 strategy

Mr Green’s new business strategy is having an immediate impact on the company, with a 14% YoY rise in Q3 revenues leaving its CEO Per Norman in buoyant mood.

The strategy, dubbed Mr Green 2.0, focuses on five cornerstones – brand, user experience, product offering, geographical expansion and green gaming.

With an updated tech platform launched earlier in the year, as well as a new sportsbook and customised live casino environment, Norman is confident the business is heading in the right direction and is looking to build on the momentum gained in Q3.

Speaking with EGR, Norman discusses how the new business strategy is delivering an improved performance and provides an update to its challenge of Austrian betting duties.

eGaming Review (EGR): How do you assess the company’s performance during Q3?

Per Norman (PN): During Q3, we saw some good indicators coming from a lot of the work that we have done internally with the tech platform and within the organisation. Now we are adding more of the fun stuff, so to say, including the new sportsbook and live casino environment. There are also a lot of new things coming up related to the products.

Looking at the revenues and the other key indicators, it seems like the customers are liking it. I feel there is some momentum in Q3 compared to Q2 and Q1. But of course, when you do a lot of things like this, focus has been more on the revenue side rather than the cost side. If you look at the bottom line of EBITDA and EBIT, it’s something that can be improved upon.

EGR: Do you expect the bottom line to improve, now that the platform and new products are in place?

PN: Firstly, we don’t give any forecasts on results, but our focus is to keep the momentum on the growth. Every change that we do takes some time before you see the effect of it, but now with all the changes we are seeing it have an effect on the top-line. As long as we continue to push on the top-line, it will of course help later on with the bottom-line results.

What you see now with the new platform, we are starting to deliver by what we mean by our business strategy Mr Green 2.0, that includes broadening our product offering with sportsbook for example, a better user experience, we also have some elements of the customer journey that is already in place. We are adding a lot of things that is based on the platform.

EGR: How exactly is the new tech platform improving the business?

PN: Going forward it allows us to enable personalisation on a customer basis, which is both in communications but also on the user experience, such as personalising the games we provide and the look and feel of the products. It’s the platform that enables us to give a more unique user experience.

This industry needs to leave the generic environment and move into a much more personalised environment in order to give what the customers expects going forward.

EGR: Part of the Mr Green 2.0 strategy is to expand geographically, can you give us an indication of where this could be?

PN: We have a team that is constantly working and looking at different opportunities in different countries and we look at the competition and regulatory issues.

As part of Mr Green 2.0 strategy, we’ve been so focused on the platform side of things, but having those things under control it’s so much easier to enter a new country, as from the operations perspective, the factors are already there with the platform, the marketing team and internal processes in place.

International expansion is important for us, and we see this as a strategic move going forward in the next few years. It could happen in the short-term, but you have to see it from a 1-2 year perspective.

EGR: Can you provide an update on the Austrian betting duties, which have again impacted on earnings?

PN: There are two parts to this. We have actually finalised a payment of the historical taxes going back to 2014. The second is that we are appealing against the 40% online gaming tax and disputing it, but we will see what happens. That’s the long journey, but at the end of the day I think Austria cannot have a tax legislation which goes in a completely different direction than what you see the rest of Europe heading in.

We feel confident that sooner or later, Austria will look to re-regulate and they will also realise that in order to get the channelization and control of players and operators in the market, then they will need to have tax levels at around 15-20%.

EGR: Lastly, what’s the focus for Mr Green in the coming months?

PN: We are working hard under each of the five cornerstones of our strategy to deliver new things coming up, which includes the product offering, the user experience, the geographic expansion, the green [responsible] gaming and the brand.

In order to deliver our strategy, we need to fill those headlines mentioned with actions. That means whenever we introduce something or expand something, we are going to tell you and point back to the strategy.