Prepared remarks
Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to Codere Online's Second Quarter 2026 Results. Operator provided instructions. I will now hand the conference over to Guillermo Lancha, Director of Investor Relations and Communications. Guillermo, please go ahead.
Thanks, operator, and welcome, everyone, to Codere Online's earnings call for the second quarter of 2026. Today, you will hear from our CEO, Aviv Sher; and CFO, Marcus Arildsson. Please note that figures reflected in today's presentation are preliminary and unaudited and include certain non-IFRS financial metrics, which should be considered in addition to our IFRS results. Reconciliations and further details are available in the appendix. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties. While these statements reflect our current expectations, we undertake no obligation to update them after this call. A replay and transcript will be available at codereonline.com where investors can also sign up for e-mail alerts. With that, I will go ahead and pass the call on to Aviv.
Thanks, Guillermo, and thank you all for joining us today. The second quarter was a standout quarter for Codere Online. We delivered our highest quarterly revenue to date alongside strong profitability and cash generation. Revenue growth accelerated meaningfully versus an already strong first quarter, driven by solid execution in Spain and Mexico and improving conditions in Colombia and Panama, providing us with a solid position and confidence to raise our outlook for the full year. Starting with the highlights for the second quarter of 2026 on Page 8. We delivered consolidated net gaming revenue of EUR 69.4 million, representing a 27% increase versus the second quarter of last year and a significant sequential acceleration versus the first quarter. Casino accounted for 62% of revenue during the period, while sports betting represented the remaining 38%. These trends are consistent with recent quarters, although the contribution from sports increased slightly due to the World Cup. All operating KPIs improved in the quarter with average monthly active customers reaching approximately 173,000, up 12% compared to Q2 of last year and average monthly spend per customer up 13% year-over-year to EUR 134, reflecting both strong engagement and a higher player value base. On the acquisition side, we acquired around 108,000 first-time depositors during the quarter, nearly 40% more than in the prior year quarter. Once again, supported by strong activity around the World Cup, cost per acquisition improved to approximately EUR 200, demonstrating the continued efficiency of our marketing investments. Most importantly, based on strong performance delivered in the quarter and the momentum we continue to see across the business, we are raising our guidance for the full year of 2026. We now expect gaming revenue of between EUR 255 million to EUR 265 million compared with our previous guidance of EUR 235 million to EUR 245 million. We are also raising guidance for adjusted EBITDA between EUR 20 million to EUR 25 million compared with our prior outlook of EUR 15 million to EUR 20 million. Marcus will cover later the different factors behind our decision to raise guidance. With respect to capital allocation, we did not repurchase any shares during the second quarter. As a reminder, our share repurchase authorization remains in place through the end of 2026. We continue to take a disciplined approach to capital allocation and believe maintaining a strong balance sheet provides important strategic flexibility as we execute our growth strategy and evaluate opportunities to create shareholder value. Before moving on, I would like to briefly comment on the World Cup, which impacted both our Q2 and Q3 results. Overall, performance was outstanding and materially ahead of the 2022 tournament. Excluding Colombia, unique users were approximately 56% above the previous World Cup level. And we acquired nearly 40,000 new customers around the event. The stakes reached around EUR 63 million, approximately 180% above the previous tournament, demonstrating the significantly greater scale of the business and the strong engagement of our customers. Net gaming revenue more than doubled compared to the 2022 World Cup despite generally favorable outcomes for the customers. We believe these results highlight the significant progress Codere Online has made over the last four years in terms of scale, customer engagement and monetization. With that, I will now hand the call over to Marcus to review the financial performance in more detail.
Hello, everyone. Turning to Slide 10. You can see our consolidated net gaming revenue and adjusted EBITDA performance by country for the second quarter of 2026. Starting with net gaming revenue. We generated EUR 69.4 million during the quarter, representing growth of 27% compared to the second quarter of 2025. Both Spain and Mexico delivered excellent performances and were the primary drivers of growth. In Spain, net gaming revenue increased by EUR 5.5 million year-over-year to EUR 27.6 million, representing growth of nearly 25%. The market continues to perform exceptionally well and reflects both healthy customer acquisition and strong player engagement. In Mexico, net gaming revenue increased by EUR 7.1 million to EUR 36.1 million, representing growth of approximately 24% versus the second quarter of last year. Mexico remains our largest market and continues to be a key contributor to both growth and profitability. Our other markets, which include Colombia, Panama and the City of Buenos Aires, generated EUR 5.7 million of net gaming revenue during the quarter, up more than 50% year-over-year. The strongest contributor came from Colombia following the removal of the 19% VAT on customer deposits which was in effect during most of 2025. We have been able to re-engage customers who had previously reduced activity due to the tax and have now recovered NGR and deposit levels broadly in line with those achieved before the tax was introduced. The attractive market in Panama continued to perform very strongly during the quarter, ahead of our expectations and especially during the World Cup. Turning to profitability. Adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 5.8 million in the quarter compared to EUR 2.3 million in the second quarter of last year. Within that, Spain contributed EUR 7.8 million, while Mexico delivered EUR 3.6 million, reflecting the operating leverage inherent in the business as revenue continues to scale. Overall, the second quarter reflects strong momentum across the business, continued revenue growth in our core markets and a further improvement in profitability. Turning to our consolidated P&L on Page 11. We can observe that marketing expense was EUR 26.2 million during the quarter, an increase in absolute terms versus last year, but significantly lower as a percentage of revenue. Marketing represented 37.7% of NGR compared to 41.5% in the second quarter of 2025. We continue to see attractive growth opportunities across our markets and are therefore comfortable investing behind them while improving profitability. Additionally, given the good performance we have been seeing this year, we decided to make some incremental investment in marketing, both in Spain and Mexico, and the acceleration of our top line growth reflects just that. Going forward, and as has been the case since 2022, we expect to continue to gradually reduce marketing investment as a percentage of NGR with a direct positive impact on adjusted EBITDA. Gaming taxes as a percent of NGR increased materially in the quarter, driven primarily by Mexico and Colombia. In Colombia, the 19% VAT tax on deposits I mentioned earlier is now levied on gross gaming revenue. Beyond marketing, platform and content costs continue to benefit from scale, while adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 8.4% compared with 4.3% in the second quarter of last year. Now turning to Page 12. Net gaming revenue increased by 27% year-over-year, driven by a combination of customer growth and higher spend per active customer. Average monthly active customers increased by 12% to approximately 173,000 during the quarter. At the same time, average monthly spend per active customer increased by 13% versus last year, reaching EUR 134. We acquired approximately 108,000 first-time depositors during the quarter, representing growth of 37% versus Q2 of last year, while cost per acquisition improved to EUR 200 versus EUR 217 in the prior year quarter. This reflects strong execution across both acquisition and retention as well as a favorable market environment in our Codere jurisdictions. Turning to Spain on Page 13. Net gaming revenue reached EUR 27.6 million during the second quarter, up 25% versus the same period last year and 8% above sequentially. Average monthly active customers increased by approximately 11% year-over-year. Spain continues to perform ahead of our expectations. The market is benefiting from strong retention, healthy acquisition and improved player values. Importantly, since the third quarter of 2025, we are seeing higher player values that have allowed us to increase marketing investment while still generating attractive returns. Spain remains a mature and tightly regulated market. And while we're benefiting from structural growth in that market, we're also recovering market share, which makes the level of growth we're currently achieving particularly encouraging. Moving now on to Mexico on Page 14. Net gaming revenue increased 24% year-over-year in the second quarter, reaching EUR 36.1 million. As we mentioned in our last call, we continue to improve the quality of our customer database, hence, the 10% sequential decline in active customers versus Q1 earlier this year. We still managed to grow it slightly versus the prior year period, thanks to strong acquisition around the World Cup, particularly with Mexico making it past the group stage. As such, the increase in net gaming revenue was driven almost entirely by higher spend per active customer, reflecting the actions we have taken to improve customer quality and reduce promotional abuse within the database. Mexico has also benefited from a more rational competitive environment than we anticipated at the beginning of the year. Combined with our strong brand, product offering and disciplined marketing approach, this has supported continued growth and improved profitability. Overall, Mexico remains our largest market and still one of our biggest growth opportunities to drive future value creation for Codere Online. On Page 15, turning to the balance sheet. We closed the quarter with approximately EUR 63 million of total cash, of which EUR 58 million was available. Our structural negative working capital position remained in line at approximately EUR 25 million or 10% of LTM net gaming revenue, supporting the strong cash generation of the business. The strength of our balance sheet with no financial debt and higher cash continues to provide significant flexibility as we evaluate capital allocation opportunities to support and drive future growth. Turning to Page 16. We generated EUR 6.9 million of cash flow during the second quarter, increasing available cash to EUR 58 million at quarter end. This result reflects the continued improvement in profitability as well as our ability to convert earnings into cash. As we have discussed in previous quarters, the timing of certain working capital and tax items can impact cash flow in any given quarter, and Q2 was positively impacted by some of them. As a rule of thumb, when looking at the full year, we would expect to convert a high proportion of our adjusted EBITDA into cash, with corporate income tax being the key relevant difference between the two. Turning to Page 18. As Aviv mentioned, we are raising guidance for full year 2026 net gaming revenue to between EUR 255 million and EUR 265 million and adjusted EBITDA of between EUR 20 million to EUR 25 million. The bridge between our original outlook and our revised guidance can be explained primarily by four primary factors. First, Colombia has benefited from the removal of the 19% VAT on deposits, allowing us to re-engage players who had reduced or stopped playing due to the tax and bringing activity levels back to broadly in line with those seen before the measure was introduced last year. Second, Spain has continued to outperform our expectations, supported by stronger player values, which have encouraged us to add to our investment in marketing while maintaining attractive returns and profitability. And that's on top of the industry growth we are benefiting from. Third, as I mentioned earlier, Mexico has benefited from a more favorable competitive environment than originally anticipated with two relevant operators not currently active in the market. And fourth, the Mexican peso has remained stronger than assumed when we established our original outlook, having already contributed to more than EUR 4 million in the first half of the year. That said, the outlook revision is not explained by these factors alone. We have seen strong execution and strong underlying performance across virtually all areas of the business. Sports betting has performed exceptionally well, supported by a World Cup that exceeded our expectations, while our casino business has also continued to grow strongly. We have also seen meaningful improvements in markets such as Panama, which delivered its strongest quarter to date. And overall, we believe the second quarter demonstrates that Codere Online is firing on all cylinders with growth, player engagement, monetization and profitability all trending in the right direction. That's all from my end. I will now hand it back to Aviv for closing remarks.
Thank you, Marcus. Before we move to the Q&A session, I would like to thank all Codere Online employees for their hard work and dedication, especially around the World Cup. The strong results we reported today are a direct reflection of the efforts of our team across all our markets. I would like also to thank our shareholders and analysts for their continued support and interest in Codere Online. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.
Questions and answers
Operator provided instructions. Your first question comes from the line of Jeff Stantial with Stifel.
Maybe why don't we start off on the World Cup, two-parter here. First, can you just talk about what you've seen in terms of retention and cross-sell of the 40,000 new bettors that you called out as the tournament has ended? And then second, it does look like CAC actually came down quarter-on-quarter and the conversion rate went up despite more competition around the tournament. So if you could just help us sort of think about that trend as well because it's a bit surprising.
Okay. Thanks, Jeff. Please keep in mind the second question because I think one word I didn't understand. But the first question regarding the World Cup, we already see players that continue to play with us. It's still very early to say, right? The World Cup just ended a couple of weeks ago. The results were favorable and not favorable depending on the country. So people are a little bit run out of money plus summer. So we need to wait a little bit longer to see if those players are— I don't want to say one-timers, but for sure, those are new players that we didn't see before to know exactly their value. So far, it looks okay. It looks better than expected. Probably next quarter, I can comment more accurately on that and give better details. Regarding the CAC, what was the question exactly about the CAC?
Yes. I was asking: CAC was down quarter-on-quarter in Q2, and that's despite what I would think would be more competition and more folks investing around the World Cup. So just sort of an explanation of what drove that.
Yes. I think maybe we can say we cashed in during the World Cup because we didn't invest as much as others. We invested more before the World Cup, and I think our brand was strong enough perhaps to capture people just searching for betting and arriving to us because of our previous investment. So I think this gives part of the answer. Plus, we didn't invest directly into the World Cup broadcast, which was extremely high cost. We tried to keep the money around the World Cup. And I think the strategy proved effective. So we saw that the CPA went down.
That's great. And then maybe just shifting gears over to the cost side. It looks like just running some quick back-of-the-envelope math that the updated guidance implies about 5% flow-through to EBITDA in the back half versus about mid-30% that you realized in the front half. Marcus, can you just help us think about some of the puts and takes here in bridging those two and then taking a step back more thematically, just how you think about operating leverage in the model at this point in time and what the right go-forward EBITDA flow-through looks like, I guess, if you sort of make that assumption that CAC and end user acquisition remains somewhat stable.
Thanks, Jeff. First point, broadly speaking, we're not making any substantial statements or differentiation between the first and the second half. We don't expect any material differences in terms of flow-through to EBITDA. As you mentioned, it's relatively close in terms of what the implied figures are for the second half. So no big changes in the first half versus second half. Over time, as you know, there are a number of factors in our P&L which have a more variable component to them, such as gaming taxes, which we're very much subject to what the authorities do. We also have a significant other cost in the model, which is basically platform, which is also substantially variable. And then there's other items like payment methods, etc., which broadly speaking are probably more variable than fixed now. There is certain leverage in the business in terms of marketing and certain other expenses in terms of overheads. So over time, as we've seen so far, the conversation mostly when we had it with you guys is that there's a lot of focus on marketing. There is a little bit of leverage as well over time in other expenses. So big picture is that we think we progress both from keeping marketing as a lower percent of NGR, but there's also probably a little bit of additional operating leverage in the other expenses in the P&L. But broadly speaking, we are not foreseeing anything new that comes from the second half of the year. So overall, that's the outlook that we have with respect to the second half and just a few points on how we see it. Was there another...?
No, I think you hit it for that question. I was just going to squeeze in, if possible, one more, which is Colombia. So some good news there with the VAT tax being removed. I'm curious just how you're sort of thinking about investment in that market, how much of a priority it is and maybe how much there's a little bit of a wait-and-see on marketing investment, just given it seems to us there's still a little bit of uncertainty out there on what ultimately happens from a tax standpoint.
No. Listen, just the fact is that there is still a higher tax imposed, more taxes than anticipated. It's enough to allow us to do good CRM and retention and invest back into our players. It's not good enough to start large-scale marketing where ROI is attractive. Hopefully, with any political change there, we will see maybe more business-oriented leadership. If another layer of tax is removed and we are back to the prior tax levels, then we can discuss marketing investment again. So far, by the way, we are happy. We see good ROI on our current customer base. If we can continue to improve our product, I think we will be in a good position to start growing marketing investment and see good returns. So we are still a little bit, as you say, wait-and-see. I hope by the end of the year we will know exactly what's going on there. And if the extra tax is removed, then we can invest more.
The next question comes from the line of Ryan Sigdahl with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.
World Cup, I want to say on it. What percent of new activations, new users are also playing iCasino? And then if you have any context from the previous World Cup or previous soccer tournaments, curious how that compares relative to your expectations?
I won't give exact figures, but I think, let's not exaggerate; we see around 30% to 40% cross-activation. So far, the new users fit into this profile. As I said, let's keep this question for the next quarter, and then I can report exactly if they behaved as expected and continue with us and there is no churn. So far, we are happy with the results. To answer your question, yes, there is around 30% to 40% that are playing iGaming, more table games, by the way, if it's interesting for the audience to hear, than slots. But definitely, they are playing, and I think the team is doing a good job crossing them. So far, the profile fits the regular profile that we see.
Great. Then just on— if I look at monthly actives in both Spain and Mexico, sequentially they took a step down despite the World Cup. I know you mentioned a bit of a change in customer acquisition strategy, but can you elaborate what specifically you guys are focused on there, and if that's concerning to you on the active step down despite the World Cup?
No, I don't think it's concerning. Don't forget that we entered the summer. You are missing half of the World Cup in these results. By the way, you need to take this into consideration in terms of activity because Spain got to the final, and we have Spain as one of our leading markets. We are not worried. The active users that you see is a healthy active base. Whatever we are cleaning right now is intentional. It's not out of control. It's the opposite. This is why you see the spend per customer goes up and revenue goes up. So just looking at the KPI of active users in that case is not enough. We are very happy with the results.
Excellent. Then maybe just last one for us — with Spain winning I would have maybe expected a bit bigger sports win impact. I know a lot of unders hit. But can you just talk through player behavior activity from a betting standpoint in Spain specifically relative to them winning, but maybe some of the other props that were done?
They bet more than what we've seen in the last tournament. If we go into specifics, the tie early on with certain matches took a lot of money from the players, so they didn't engage as strongly in later stages. Then later when Spain progressed, betting on Spain progressed as well. Year-on-year, tournament-on-tournament, we saw more bets and more stakes. You cannot really compare the two tournaments directly because we had 25% more games this time than in the previous tournament overall. So that helped us get a lot more stakes than expected. Overall, bettors were active. Spanish people were happy, and from a bookie standpoint, overall this was a good result. The game finished in a tie, but Spain won; customers lost money but were still happy that the team won. So in that sense it was a win-win.
The next question comes from the line of Michael Kupinski with NOBLE Capital Markets.
Congratulations on your quarter. I have a couple of questions on nuances from the previous questions. Excluding the World Cup, how have betting volumes and customer activity trended during July? And are you seeing that momentum continue in the third quarter?
I don't think I can give specifics about July, but it's important to say that during the World Cup, if we put the World Cup effect aside, we did see a lot of iGaming activity. So in general, activity not just related to sports was high. In casino, we beat expectations by a lot, whether it's new players coming in, core players, VIP players. So everybody was playing even though we are entering the summer. I can say that the trajectory or the vector continues. Hopefully, it will continue into the third quarter. We have a bit of August until LaLiga comes back, which will take another three weeks or so. So we need to cruise through August, but I'm optimistic for Q3. I'm optimistic.
Maybe just to add and reiterate what Aviv was mentioning: both the casino side of things as well as sports were doing well. The World Cup effects from World Cup in terms of NGR fell roughly 50% in June and 50% in July, just to keep that in mind.
Yes, that's terrific. You added approximately 40,000 new customers during the World Cup. Historically, what percentage of tournament-acquired customers remain active 6 to 12 months after a major sporting event? And obviously, you can compare it to 2022.
In general, the rule of thumb — I don't know the exact answer by heart. What I can say from past experience is that these players don't last a long time and they come back again for the next big tournament, whether it's the Euro Cup, CONCACAF or another World Cup; they are not strictly one-timers, but they often place single bets in a given market. You can also see it in the CPA. Our rule of thumb is if the CPA is low, probably the return will be lower as well. So if we buy them cheap, they return cheap. If you want, Michael, send us an email and I'll check and reply with good figures. But that is more or less how we look at it.
Great. And then Mexico, obviously, is one of your largest growth opportunities. You characterized the competitive environment as favorable and mentioned your two major competitors. I was wondering if you could just add a little color on because it's curious that the promotional intensity didn't sound as strong during the World Cup. I was just wondering if you could add a little more color about the competitive environment there and changes in promotional intensity across the market even following the World Cup.
Listen, the competitive environment — if you follow the news — you see a lot of new entrants. Two big competitors were out and we saw, instead of them, four big competitors in. So it's not a closed competitive arena. I do believe that each competitor coming in increases the overall market size and brand awareness, which benefits us as veterans in the market with heavy investment into TV and solid assets. The competitive environment is harsh; we see strong competitors with good products spending a lot of money. Regarding promotional activity, some players gave large free amounts, like $100 or $150 free, which are very big amounts and allow customers to test their products. But we have a very strong brand, very good retention schemes and promotional activity for our core and VIP customers. So we are confident in our work in Mexico, but we do need to continue to invest in top-of-mind awareness and in promotional activity and give some of the money back to players. We cannot ignore the competitive environment; it is getting crowded and they are heavy spenders there.
Got you. And final question. Obviously, you have EUR 63 million in cash, no financial debt. I was wondering if you can talk a little bit about how you're thinking about capital allocation. You mentioned in your comments that you're evaluating ways to improve shareholder value. What options are you considering at this point?
Sure. Things have changed quite significantly for us over the last two years, where we've gone from bottoming out in terms of cash to now seeing significant cash flow generation. That gives us significant strategic flexibility. The things we are pursuing, in close cooperation with the Board, include evaluating strategic options mostly in Latin America. We're looking at how we can obtain specific licenses and what's the best route to enter certain markets. Many countries in that region are regulating online gaming for the first time, so we're staying close to those situations and that's a key avenue where we'll put some of the cash to work. The second piece is share repurchase programs, which we have not been active in this year. We did about $2.5 million to $3 million towards the tail end of last year. That program remains in effect. Obviously it's sensitive, so we cannot go into specific instructions, but that's definitely still an option for deploying cash. I don't know if Aviv wants to add anything else?
No, I think it mainly should give us strategic ability to take bigger moves. It's not a huge amount of cash in the market context; we are not left with a lot to do very large acquisitions outright, but we are constantly looking and keen to materialize some of the moves. We have things in the pipeline. We have more cash than we were prepared for, so it may take another quarter or two to decide exactly how to allocate it.
Your next question comes from the line of Arthur Roulac with Three Court, LP.
My first question is on full-year marketing spend. I believe on the first quarter call, you said marketing for the full year would be roughly in line with 2025. Is that still the case?
I think it will be a few percentage points up compared to 2025. We see good trends in Spain, where we are allocating more budgets and getting good returns. So we are making the marketing budget a bit higher.
Maybe to add that given we're also having good performance on NGR in euro terms, perhaps nominally marketing will come up a little bit during the full year even if as a percentage of NGR we remain in the same ballpark. There's also a secondary effect where local currency marketing spend in Mexico translates to more euros if the Mexican peso is strong. So there is that FX effect to take into account. Broadly speaking, as a percentage I think we'll probably end up in the same ballpark, although in euros we'll be a little higher.
The same percentage as 2025. Is that what you're saying?
No, not exactly the same percentage. If NGR goes higher, the percentage will likely be lower. I'm talking about nominal amount being a bit higher with FX effects, but as a percentage of NGR we expect to see a decline over time.
Yes. We're on track—the percentage is progressively coming down, although in nominal euros the amount may be slightly higher.
Right. I know that. I'm just saying last year you were around EUR 86.4 million. At the beginning of the year you said you'll be about the same level. Does that mean for the year you'll be EUR 2 million to EUR 4 million higher? Is that sort of where you're thinking about hitting?
Maybe a little bit higher; we'll see how it comes out and what opportunities we have during the second half and what day-to-day decisions we make. That could be a good starting point. Also, the strength of the peso adds a little bit in euro terms to marketing spend, so that also affects the picture.
Strategically, if we have excess EBITDA and see good opportunities to invest at attractive returns, we may put some of that money back into marketing. Most of it is going to digital and performance marketing to support results. So it's positive if we can spend equal or more than last year to drive growth.
In 2024 I think you spent EUR 90 million. Are we looking at a 2024-level number then, something in that range for the full year?
Probably yes. In a ballpark figure, we try to stay around EUR 90 million to slightly under EUR 100 million.
So the second half will look very similar to the first half?
Yes, more or less.
Because in the first half you were at EUR 51 million, and if you're saying about EUR 100 million full year, okay. Can you comment at a high level: what is a more non-growth level of marketing for this business? Many competitors are in lower growth mode and spend in the 15% to 20% range as a percentage of revenue. Is there any reason to think this business wouldn't migrate to that in the next few years?
The answer is you are correct that we should migrate toward those types of levels. I don't believe in the very low end for a regulated market at the current stage. We should get there eventually. In certain markets we are already at those levels. Mexico is still a growth market where we can add more money and grow faster; it's very big. In Spain we are closer to the levels you mention. Overall, I think as a healthy business we should look at roughly between 22% to 28% as a target band, plus or minus five percentage points. But it's also a strategic decision by shareholders: how much EBITDA do you want versus growth. We can generate more EBITDA or invest more for growth; it's a question of strategy. For us, we're aiming for the higher end of that range, around 25% plus or minus 5% to optimize investment while maintaining position.
To add, there are essentially two sides to the business. In Colombia and Argentina we're in a wait-and-see mode and not spending much in marketing. In Panama and Spain we're in ballparks closer to those stable-state levels. The key pressure point is Mexico and how we manage marketing there. Marketing has come down significantly over recent quarters, so there is a duality in the company's marketing profile.
That's extremely helpful. My next question is Spain. In a mature regulated market, I'm surprised you generated almost 25% growth. Can you talk a little bit about how you've been so successful there?
There are a few factors. One is that the market itself is growing double digits, so we benefit from that. We are growing more than the market at this stage. We've invested a lot in platform stability and technology—including AI in certain areas—which helped us achieve the stability we sought to execute our plans and maintain players. This has helped a lot in Spain over the past two quarters. We're enjoying the fruits of a long investment into the brand. Regulation in Spain still has some upcoming changes, for example around VIP and joint deposit limits, but we don't expect them to affect us materially and we can continue this growth. We're also reinvesting some excess EBITDA into Spain to acquire and retain high-value players.
As you look out in terms of your balance sheet, there's a stock buyback in place but you haven't been active. You're trading at low multiples relative to some peers and growing faster. Is there a thought to increase buybacks, or are you more focused on licenses in Argentina, Uruguay, or other markets? Can you talk about allocation thoughts?
As mentioned earlier, we are actively exploring opportunities to enter South American markets where regulation is being put in place—Uruguay, Chile, etc. Timing-wise, these can be good opportunities to move. Depending on the setup, entering a market could require limited upfront cash for licenses but will require marketing and brand investment. Other opportunities are pure acquisitions where cash is required. In parallel, the share buyback program remains in place but we've not repurchased shares this year. Broadly speaking, I would expect that in a year's time, the M&A side will likely absorb more cash than buybacks, although both will be managed in parallel.
All of the options you mentioned are on the table. I would note that part of our valuation challenge is liquidity in the stock. That affects our share price. The buyback strategy can help a bit, but liquidity is key. We believe the company performs well and should be valued more highly, and hopefully we'll see that reflected in the share price over time.
Operator provided instructions. We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Guillermo for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining. If you have any follow-ups, feel free to reach out. Otherwise, we will be speaking again in mid-November with our Q3 results. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.