GameSquare Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:GAME) Q2 2023 Results Conference Call August 14, 2023 5:00 PM ET

Company Participants

Justin Kenna - CEO

Lou Schwartz - President

Mike Munoz - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Jason Tilchen - Canaccord Genuity

Sean McGowan - ROTH MKM

Operator

Good afternoon. And thank you for joining us for the GameSquare Holdings Second Quarter 2023 Results Conference Call. On the call today we have Justin Kenna, GameSquare's CEO; Lou Schwartz, President; and Mike Munoz, CFO of GameSquare Holdings. During the call, all participations are in listen only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session.

Before management discusses their results, I’d like to remind everyone that certain statements in this call may be forward-looking in nature. These include statements involving known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. For information about forward-looking statements and risk factors, please see our MD&A for the quarter ended June 30, 2023, which can be found on our company's profile at sedar.com and on the Company's website.

I will now turn the call over to Justin Kenna, GameSquare's CEO. Justin, please go ahead.

Justin Kenna

Thank you. And good afternoon to everyone joining us on today's call. This is an exciting time at GameSquare as we completed a transformative merger with Engine Gaming in April. As a result, GameSquare and Engine Gaming's financial results are now presented on a consolidated basis for the second quarter and first half ended June 30, 2023. Since completing the merger, we have focused on successfully integrating the two companies. Combining our capabilities and talent and implementing synergies focused on driving efficiencies and reducing expenses. I want to use my time today to provide an update on the integration and how our blended capabilities are supporting significant opportunities in the seasonally strong second half of the year. I'll then turn the call over to Mike to give a recap on our financial results. Closing merger and getting the integration right were critical components of our performance during the second quarter and I'm pleased with how our teams responded. During the quarter, we removed an estimated 5 million of annualized costs associated with duplicative corporate expenses, including legal, public company and other business related costs. We believe there are additional opportunities to take more expenses out of the business and have identified a total of $8 million of annualized cost savings that we expect to be realized before the end of the year. As a result, we saw our adjusted EBITDA in the second quarter improved by approximately $1.1 million from the first quarter. We expect our adjusted EBITDA to improve significantly in the third and fourth quarters as we benefit from higher sales, a more profitable mix of business and additional merger related synergies and cost cutting actions.