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9
Gentoo Media share price, year to date( 1 Jan-31 Mar)
IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS
As the Affiliate Monitor has detailed in previous issues, with both Better Collective and Catena Media, there are specific reasons for their share price falls.
But perhaps more worrying for the investability of the European-listed gaming affiliate space, one of the igaming affiliate sector’ s more successful operators in recent years has also suffered share price falls despite posting decent results.
Indeed, Gentoo Media can likely lay claim to be vying with Gambling. com Group to be challenging the notion of a sector in decline. As can be seen from its fourth quarter earnings statement, the company, which finally split from the software provider GiG late last year, posted revenues that rose 38 % YoY to € 35.9 million, of which 18 % was
organic, while EBITDA was up 31 % to € 14.3 million.
Despite continued buying from the various investment interests of Mateusz Juroszek, ex-founder of Polish bookmaker STS, the share price has also struggled this year and is down 19 % year to date.
WHAT THIS WORLD IS ABOUT
The fear is that at the very least the share price performances across the listed gaming affiliate space suggest investors have lost faith in the model. The lack of any evident enthusiasm is stark.
Is this down to the serial disappointments from the market leaders in the last few years? If so, that is understandable. Both Catena and Better Collective have led investors up the hill with serial acquisitions, and, with the former, all the way back down again with its subsequent asset disposals. Meanwhile, Better Collective’ s
October warning also gave investors a fright.
Investor disillusion usually only leads one way: to companies being taken back into private hands. There is the potential for some further consolidation among the listed players – indeed, the suspicion is that the only reason investors in Catena are retaining their holdings is to wait on a potential buyout.
The story is different in the US. Gambling. com Group could likely do with a peer or two with which to be compared but for the time being, investors seem happy enough with the story it is telling and, in a sense, the woes of its European listed peers provide a nice counterpoint.
But whether the sector will have the same number of listed players this time next year – or even when the first quarter earnings season rolls around – is perhaps a moot point.
April 2025