Gamehaus Holdings (NASDAQ:GMHS) released fourth-quarter financial results and hosted an earnings call on Tuesday. Read the complete transcript below.

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Summary

Gamehaus Holdings reported total revenue of $104.7 million and net income of $3.9 million for fiscal year 2026, with Q4 revenue at $24.3 million and net income of $0.9 million.

The company is undergoing a strategic transformation to focus on generative AI, reallocating resources from its casual and social casino mobile games, and expects existing portfolio revenue to gradually decline.

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) revenue mix increased to 16.2%, with a goal to exceed 20% by the end of 2026, enhancing gross margins structurally.

Gamehaus Holdings made a minority investment in an AI game generation studio and is building internal AI capabilities, aiming to become an AI-driven global content production platform.

Operating expenses decreased by 14.4% in Q4, with improvements in marketing efficiency and AI-driven administrative cost reductions; the company maintains a strong cash position of $17.6 million.

The company extended its $5 million share repurchase program, reflecting confidence in financial stability; Q1 FY27 revenue guidance is set between $20 million and $23 million.

Management highlighted the need for further validation of AI-generated games before commercialization and emphasized the strategic shift as necessary due to stagnant user acquisition dynamics in mature markets.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by and welcome to Gamehaus Holdings' fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2026 earnings conference call. Currently, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will follow at that time. As a reminder, we are recording today's call. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I will now turn the call over to today's speaker host, Ms. Ali Wong. Ali, please proceed.

Ali Wong, Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Hello everyone. Thank you all for joining us on today's conference call to discuss the financial results of Gamehaus Holdings for the fourth quarter and full year of fiscal 2026. We released our earnings results earlier today. The press release is available on the company's website as well as from newswire services. On the call with me today are Mr. Brian Xie Feng, Chairman of the Board, Mr. Carl Cai Min, Chief Executive Officer, and Mr. Sean Zhang, Head of Capital Markets and Investor Relations. Brian will review business operations and company highlights, followed by Sean who will discuss detailed financial results. They will all be available to answer your questions during the Q&A session. Before we proceed, I would like to remind you that this call may contain forward-looking statements which are inherently subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from our current expectations.

For detailed discussions of the risks and uncertainties, please refer to our filings with the SEC. Also, please note that unless otherwise stated, all figures mentioned during the conference call are in U.S. dollars. With that, I would like to introduce our Chairman, Brian. Brian will deliver his remarks in Chinese and I will follow up with corresponding English translations. Please go ahead, Brian. Good day everyone and thank you for joining Gamehaus Holdings' conference call for the fourth quarter and full year of fiscal 2026.

Fiscal year 2026 was Gamehaus Holdings' last full fiscal year under its previous business model. Earlier in August, we announced a strategic transformation for the company. This quarter marks the beginning of the execution phase of that transformation. As a result, today's discussion covers both our operating performance before the decision was made and the initial financial implications of the transformation. For the full fiscal year 2026, total revenue was $104.7 million and net income was $3.9 million.

In the fourth quarter, total revenue was $24.3 million within our previously announced outlook range of $23 million to $26 million and net income was $0.9 million. Against the current industry backdrop, we have seen a structural shift in the economics of user acquisition for casual games. The player base in mature markets has remained stagnant for an extended period, while platform attribution and targeting capabilities have continued to weaken. At the same time, competition for user acquisition has increasingly become a zero-sum game within a largely fixed pool of users.

Together, these factors have continued to compress margins in game publishing. We do not view this as an issue with any single title or any particular quarter. Rather, we believe it reflects a longer-term change in the environment surrounding this business model. Based on this assessment, we decided to proactively adjust our resource allocation and redirect more resources toward new opportunities opened up by generative AI. In terms of execution, beginning this quarter, we have changed the way we manage our existing portfolio of casual and social casino mobile games with a greater focus on cash flow and profitability.

User acquisition spending will also be reallocated across titles based on expected returns. We began implementing these changes in July, so their impact is not yet reflected in the period we are reporting today. We expect revenue from our existing portfolio to gradually decline and this is reflected in the outlook we will provide later for the next quarter. Our operating metrics this quarter already reflect this shift in focus. While both DAUs and MAUs declined year over year, in the fourth quarter ARPDAU increased 11.6% to $0.577 from $0.517, and average daily payer conversion improved to 2.5% from 2.3%.

As we execute this strategic transformation, we will remain focused on improving the quality of our operations, maximizing the value of our existing player base, and maintaining a strong player experience. At the same time, our financial position and cash reserves remain solid. As of June 30, 2026, we had $17.6 million in cash and cash equivalents, up from $15.2 million at the end of the prior fiscal year. During the fiscal year we remained profitable, increased our cash reserve, and continued executing our share repurchase program.

We believe our current financial position provides a solid foundation for executing the strategic transformation. As we manage our existing business under this new approach, we are also continuing to increase our DTC penetration. By the end of the fiscal quarter, our company-wide DTC revenue mix had reached 16.2%, up further from the previous quarter. DTC reduces platform commissions and directly improves gross margin for our games, driving the year-over-year improvement in gross margin this quarter.

Importantly, this improvement does not depend on the level of our user acquisition spending. It is structural in nature and should become more meaningful as DTC penetration continues to increase. DTC remains one of the few areas where we continue to invest across our existing portfolio. Our goal is to increase overall DTC penetration to more than 20% by December 31, 2026. Let me also briefly update you on the new direction I mentioned earlier. During the fiscal year, we made a minority investment in an early-stage AI game generation studio.

Since June, we have worked with the team to validate the end-to-end production process and identified areas that current generative capabilities cannot yet handle. Our current focus is on determining the right product format to bring to market. This work is still at an early stage and we are not providing specific product targets or timelines at this point. We will share an update when we have meaningful progress. At the same time, we are closely evaluating opportunities for AI-generated content in other areas of our business with the goal of developing new growth drivers as quickly as possible and, over time, becoming an AI-driven global content production and distribution platform. In parallel, we are building the internal AI capabilities needed to support this transformation. At the end of June 2026, we officially launched the Gamehub AI agent system. This is a company-wide AI access and governance platform deployed on our own servers. It provides employees with centralized access to high-quality AI models, tiered usage limits, and end-to-end monitoring, and currently integrates more than 10 domestic and international models.

As of July 16, adoption of the new system had reached 70% of employees across the company. G&A expenses declined 6.6% year over year this quarter, partly reflecting efficiency gains from the use of AI tools across our administrative functions. For our self-developed tools, throughout the fiscal year we continued to build out our internal data and shared technology infrastructure, including real-time advertising data systems, internal data interface services, and data warehouse capabilities.

We also continued to enhance our AI-powered ad video generation tools and added video evaluation and validation capabilities to improve both the efficiency and quality of creative production. Looking ahead, in line with our strategic transformation, our focus will be on moving from broad AI adoption to deeper usage, turning AI from a collection of individual productivity tools into reusable organizational infrastructure, and extending these capabilities into more specific areas of our operations.

Turning to shareholder return, as of June 30, 2026, we had repurchased approximately 518,000 Class A ordinary shares for approximately $600,000. On August 27, our Board approved a one-year extension of the existing $5 million share repurchase program through August 28, 2027, with all other terms remaining unchanged. Our decision to continue the program as we enter the execution phase of our strategic transformation reflects our confidence in the company's financial foundation and long-term value.

Taking into account our new approach to managing the existing business, as part of our strategic transformation, we expect total revenue for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 to be in the range of approximately $20 million to $23 million. Now I will turn the call over to Sean to walk you through our financial performance.

Sean Zhang (Head of Capital Markets and Investor Relations)

Thank you, Brian, and hello everyone. I will now walk through our financial results in more detail for the fourth quarter and the full fiscal year 2026, which ended June 30, 2026. Please note that all figures are in US dollars and all comparisons are made on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise stated. Let me start with our fourth quarter revenue performance. Total revenue for the quarter was 24.3 million, a decrease of 20.8% from 30.7 million in the same period last year.

As Brian mentioned, during the quarter we continued to take a disciplined approach to user acquisition spending and adjusted our marketing strategy in response to changes in the market environment. At the same time, we continue to improve monetization efficiency through ongoing content optimization and targeted LiveOps initiatives. Revenue remained broadly in line with our expectations. Looking at the revenue breakdown, in-app purchases revenue was 21.7 million, down 22.2% from 27.9 million a year ago.

Advertising revenue was 2.6 million, compared with 2.8 million in the prior-year period. Improvements in ARPDAU and payer conversion reflected our continued progress in monetization efficiency and helped partially mitigate the impact of lower user volumes. For the full fiscal year 2026, revenue totaled 104.7 million, a decrease of 11.4% from 118 million in the prior fiscal year. The full-year decline was mainly driven by the same factors we discussed for the quarter as we became more selective in user acquisition spending and continued to refine our marketing approach across our portfolio.

In-app purchase revenue was 94.5 million, down 11.2% from 106 million in the previous fiscal year, while advertising revenue was 10.2 million, compared with 11.7 million last year. Moving on to expenses, total operating costs and expenses were 25.1 million, a decrease of 14.4% from 29.3 million in the same period last year, reflecting our continued focus on operating efficiency and disciplined resource allocation. Cost of revenue decreased 17.4% to 12.0 million, mainly due to lower platform commission expenses and reduced profit sharing payments to game developers as certain mature titles move further along in their life cycle.

R&D expenses were 1.5 million compared with 1.4 million a year ago. The modest increase reflected our continuing investment in game development projects already underway and related R&D initiatives. Selling and marketing expenses were 10.2 million, compared with 11.8 million in the prior-year period. The decrease was mainly driven by lower advertising spend, reflecting our continued efforts to improve marketing efficiency. G&A expenses were 1.4 million, a decrease of 6.6% from 1.5 million a year ago.

The improvement reflected lower personnel costs and efficiency gains from the increasing adoption of AI-enabled tools across our administrative functions. For the full fiscal year 2026, total operating costs and expenses were 103.3 million, a decrease of 9.9% from 114.7 million in the previous fiscal year. This reflects our disciplined cost management in a challenging environment. Cost of revenue declined 11.4% to 49.5 million, reflecting lower platform commission expenses and reduced profit sharing payments to game developers as certain mature titles move further along in their life cycle.

R&D expenses were 6.3 million, up 11.4% from 5.77 million, reflecting our continued investment in game development and related R&D initiatives. Selling and marketing expenses were 41.0 million, down 15.2% from 48.4 million, mainly due to a 7.3 million reduction in advertising spend on player acquisition and retention as we maintain a disciplined approach to marketing investment. G&A expenses were 6.4 million, up 36.5% from 4.7 million in the previous fiscal year.

The increase primarily reflected higher personnel costs and continued investment in our public company infrastructure and organizational capabilities. This increase was partially offset by headcount reductions and efficiency improvements during the fourth quarter. Moving down the income statement, operating loss for the quarter was 0.8 million compared with operating income of 1.4 million in the same period last year. Operating margin was negative 3.1% compared with positive 4.6% a year ago.

For the full fiscal year 2026, operating income was 1.4 million compared with 3.4 million in the previous fiscal year. Operating margin was 1.3% compared with 2.9% last year. Other income, net was 1.6 million compared with 0.1 million in the prior-year period. For the full fiscal year 2026, other income, net was 2.5 million compared with 0.6 million in the previous fiscal year. Net income was 0.9 million compared with 1.5 million a year ago. Net income attributable to Gamehaus Holdings shareholders per ordinary share was 0.02 compared with 0.03 in the prior-year period.

For the full fiscal year 2026, net income was 3.9 million compared with 3.8 million in the previous fiscal year. Net income attributable to Gamehaus Holdings shareholders per ordinary share was 0.08 in both fiscal years. We ended fiscal year 2026 with 17.6 million in cash and cash equivalents compared with 15.2 million as of June 30, 2025. Including short-term and long-term investments, our combined cash and investment balance was approximately 25 million.

We believe this provides a solid foundation to support our operations and future initiatives. Turning to capital allocation, as a reminder, our board approved a one-year extension of the existing US$5 million share repurchase program, extending it through August 28, 2027. As of June 30, 2026, we had repurchased approximately 518,000 Class A ordinary shares for approximately 600,000. Going forward, we will continue to evaluate repurchase activity based on market conditions, share price performance and our broader capital allocation priorities.

Looking ahead, as Brian mentioned earlier, for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 ending September 30, 2026, we expect total revenue to be in the range of approximately 20 million to 23 million. To wrap up, fiscal year 2026 was a year of disciplined execution and continued investment in our long-term capabilities. While we made deliberate adjustments to our investment approach, we continue to improve monetization efficiency, maintain cost discipline and strengthen our financial foundation.

As we enter fiscal year 27, we remain focused on executing our strategic transformation, managing our existing portfolio with greater emphasis on cash flow and profitability, advancing our AI-related initiatives and maintaining a balanced approach to profitability, capital allocation and long-term growth. With that, we are happy to take your questions. Operator, proceed.

OPERATOR

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press Star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press Star then two. Additionally, when asking a question, please state your questions in Chinese first, then immediately translate them into English for the convenience of everyone on the call.

Again, it is Star then one to ask a question. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question comes from Ronghua with Jinyu Asset. Please go ahead.

Ronghua, Analyst at Jinyu Asset

Hello management, I have two questions. The first one is management just noted that the company has completed validation of its end-to-end AI game generation process. What are the key steps that still need to be completed before these products can move into commercialization? My next question is we note that full-year operating income was 1.4 million, while the net income was 3.9 million, with the difference coming largely from other income. At the same time, the company is directing resources toward a new area that does not yet generate revenue.

How long does the company believe its current cash reserves can support this transition and will the company need to raise external financing? That's my question. Thank you.

Carl Yimin Cai, Chief Executive Officer

Okay. Thank you for your question. Let me take your first question. We have now fully validated the end-to-end production pipeline for AI-generated games. For casual titles with relatively simple mechanics, a complete game can essentially be produced within one week, which fully demonstrates the efficiency of the pipeline. In the next phase, our focus will shift primarily to refining the player experience, including level design, difficulty curve calibration and other key elements to ensure that our products are not only produced quickly, but produced well at the same time.

Identifying gameplay prototypes that the market genuinely embraces is critical. Games ultimately have to win over players, and being fun is the prerequisite for any commercialization. Discovering gameplay that is truly engaging is therefore one of our most important priorities at this stage. In the second half of the year, the company will continue to test and validate across a range of game progress. On one hand, for established traditional gameplay, we will use AI to bring products to market with greater efficiency and to operate them at lower cost.

On the other hand, we will also actively explore AI-native gameplay with the ambition of creating an entirely new game experience for the AI era.

Sean Zhang (Head of Capital Markets and Investor Relations)

Thank you. This is Sean. Let me take your second question, starting with the absolute level of cash. As of June 30, 2026, the company held cash and cash equivalents of 17.6 million, up from 15.2 million at the end of the prior fiscal year. As you can see, in a year in which revenue declined 11.4%, our cash position increased rather than decreased and remains at a fairly ample level overall. This reflects the fact that over the past year, while we continue to monitor the changing market conditions facing our legacy business, we maintained a relatively prudent approach to running the company.

Second, our legacy casual and social casino games are a set of mature products with a stable user base and predictable revenue. Managing this portfolio for cash flow and return, which we began this quarter, is precisely intended to make it generate cash on a consistent and stable basis. Much of the investment required during this transition will be funded from that cash, and the company plans to direct its cash reserves primarily toward developing this new direction in AI-generated content.

That is also the reason we changed how we manage the legacy portfolio. Operating these mature products as a stable source of cash is what enables that cash to support the build-out of the new direction. In terms of pacing, we will deploy capital in stages as the direction is validated rather than committing everything at once. As validation progresses, the scale of investment will increase accordingly and we will update the market as substantive progress is made.

As for financing, the company will continue to evaluate the range of capital markets tools available to it and make financing decisions based on the interests of shareholders and the company's broader development needs. We have no financing arrangements to report at this time. This is my answer.

OPERATOR

Thank you. The next question comes from Ji Li with Zhishang Securities. Please go ahead.

Ronghua, Analyst at Jinyu Asset

Now I'm translating myself. I have two questions. The first one is the management mentioned that the company began managing its existing project portfolio under a new approach starting in July. How is this change expected to affect revenue and profitability over the next several quarters? And the second one is the company's first quarter fiscal 2027 revenue guidance is US$20 million to US$23 million, which implies a further decline at the midpoint from US$24.3 million this quarter.

With the legacy business continuing to contract and the new direction not yet generating revenue, how should investors think about the company's further revenue level? Thank you.

Carl Yimin Cai, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you for your questions. On the revenue side, with the more prudent and disciplined control over marketing spend that we have applied to the existing portfolio since July, we expect revenue from this portfolio to see some degree of moderation over the next one to two quarters. To improve our revenue performance, we are working on two fronts. First, continuing to increase the share of revenue coming from our direct-to-consumer channels in order to optimize our channel cost structure, and second, carrying out more refined operations tailored to the needs of our existing user base so as to improve retention and monetization depth.

On the cost side, we will continue to exercise strict discipline over the scale of our marketing spend, concentrating on campaigns with shorter payback periods and higher efficiency while steadily advancing the optimization of operating costs. We expect these measures to effectively offset the impact of the revenue moderation and to drive an overall improvement in profitability.

Sean Zhang (Head of Capital Markets and Investor Relations)

This is Sean. I will take your second question. I take the essence of the question to be where this declining curve bottoms out and where the upward momentum comes from. Let me address it in three parts. First, this guidance is fully consistent with the strategic adjustment we are making to legacy business. Carl covered this fairly clearly in his answer to an earlier question, so I will not go into further detail here. What we would ask is that the market read the legacy portfolio as an actively managed curve rather than a passively declining one when assessing our future revenue.

Second, I would like to provide some context. Looking back over the past several quarters, management had already observed mounting pressure on future growth even before any change in business strategy. The player base in mature markets has been contracting, platform-side attribution and targeting capabilities have continued to weaken, and user acquisition has become a zero-sum contest. In other words, it is not that a change in strategy caused the legacy business to contract.

Rather, given the objective conditions, it would be quite difficult to deliver sustainable growth by continuing to invest along the prior path. Based on that assessment and out of a sense of responsibility to our investors, the company's priority must be to find the route back to growth. Third, on where that growth will come from, we can say with confidence that the company's future growth will come from the new momentum of the AI-generated content business.

We are currently at the transition point between old and new sources of momentum. We do not shy away from the fact that the legacy business will continue to contract. At present, our primary focus is on laying the groundwork to establish our second growth curve as quickly as possible. That work is underway and we look forward to reporting related progress to the market in the near future. That's my answer to your second question. Thank you.

OPERATOR

There are no additional questions at this time. I will now hand back to the management team for any closing remarks.

Carl Yimin Cai, Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for participating on today's call and thank you for your support. We appreciate your interest and look forward to reporting to you again next quarter on our progress.

OPERATOR

Thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer: This transcript is provided for informational purposes only. While we strive for accuracy, there may be errors or omissions in this automated transcription. For official company statements and financial information, please refer to the company's SEC filings and official press releases. Corporate participants' and analysts' statements reflect their views as of the date of this call and are subject to change without notice.