everplay: Two Record Launches in One Month Turn a Soft H1 Into a Mid-Quarter Upgrade

A delayed shooter sequel and a brand-new Bulkhead franchise reset 2026 — and quietly raised the 2027 bar.

EVPL.L · Earnings Call · 2026-09-15

A soft half, an H2 bet that landed

everplay group's interim numbers read like a company biding its time. Group revenue fell 8% to £66.9m (down 5% excluding the exit from physical distribution), adjusted EBITDA slipped to £9.2m at a 13.8% margin, and a one-off prior-year tax adjustment produced a small reported loss after tax. CEO Mikkel Weider was plain about why: “We had no large launches during the first half as well as a delay in the launch of Hell Let Loose: Vietnam, which naturally impacted the results.” — Mikkel Weider, CEO · 2026-09-15 The half was deliberately back-weighted — capitalized development up across 20% more titles, first-party IP at 65% of that spend, and £57.1m of cash on hand — a pipeline being loaded, not a business losing its way. Then the second half arrived. Hell Let Loose Vietnam landed in August to a record sales month and a #1 spot on Steam's global bestseller chart (after some launch-window review scores wobbles that the team has since fixed). Weeks later, Wardogs reset the record again.

We have already sold well in excess of 1 million copies with peak CCUs well above 400,000. And review scores have great momentum being 80% positive on Steam. As we speak right now, it is still the #1 top-selling game on Steam.
Mikkel Weider, CEO · 2026-09-15

Management now expects “revenues and adjusted EBITDA to be materially ahead of current market expectations” — Mikkel Weider, CEO · 2026-09-15 — defined, helpfully, by the CFO: “Our brokers this morning have raised guidance by 10% on adjusted EBITDA” — Rashid Varachia, CFO and COO · 2026-09-15, with a similar lift to the top line. For a ~£400m-market-cap publisher, a mid-quarter upgrade of that size is the whole story.

Wardogs is the real change: a new franchise and a deeper stake

What's genuinely new isn't the guide, it's the asset behind it. Wardogs is a brand-new IP from Bulkhead, the studio inside Super Media Group. Since period end, everplay exercised its option to lift its stake in Super Media Group to 28% from 20% for an extra £2m — a rare moment where a publisher's small equity position in a partner becomes a strategic foothold in a genre. Weider framed it bluntly: “We have a chance to become one of the market leaders in this category of shooter games.” — Mikkel Weider, CEO · 2026-09-15 There is a nuance worth flagging. Wardogs launched into early access, and analysts probed the revenue recognition — the CFO confirmed it is standard point-of-sale recognition, adding that this is no subscription business. That matters: the eye-catching launch numbers convert to revenue immediately rather than trickling in, which is precisely what powers the promised H2 weighting. It also means the brutal comparator simply moves to 2027. Meanwhile StoryToys quietly keeps compounding — revenue up 43%, subscribers +22% to 408k, and the Netflix partnership extending with My Very Hungry Caterpillar on Netflix Playground. It is the least headline-grabbing StoryToys evidence, but it is recurring, software-like revenue that de-risks the lumpy AAA launch calendar.

The scare that didn't bite: AI vs. publishing

The sharpest contrast with March's call is what has vanished. Six months ago the dominant question was disintermediation:

There's been a lot of narrative over the last few months that AI will disintermediate software businesses, make them less relevant. Could you address that directly for everplay and outline why developers won't be able to go straight to players and bypass Team17 or everplay?
James Targett, Analyst · 2026-03-31

Weider's answer then leaned on an analogy — “We don't see clear indications that there will be like one person in a basement ticking a button and suddenly having a wonderful game” — Mikkel Weider, CEO · 2026-03-31 — with everplay positioning itself as the professional distributor, "closer to the Netflix." In the H1 2026 call, the existential worry is simply absent. AI surfaces only as internal tooling and centralization ("efficiency"), never as a threat to the model. Two record launches are the practical rebuttal: distribution, marketing and cross-promotion (if you like Hell Let Loose, try Wardogs) still command a margin.

The bar for 2027 — and a tell-nothing tariff

The risk is in the setup itself. Revenue is skewed to a handful of titles, and analysts asked the question that matters: “the bar has been set high for next year... do you think it will be possible to grow revenues in 2027?” — James Targett, Analyst · 2026-09-15 The answer — "for the underlying business, definitely" — rests on back-catalog longevity that has historically run near three-quarters of revenue, supported by a deliberately conservative “2 years with month 1 being 30%” — Rashid Varachia, CFO · 2026-03-31 capitalized-development amortization policy. The 2027 slate (Police Simulator, Golf With Your Friends 2, Worms: Galactic Tactics, plus Holstin and Westlanders) is already announced, and the Bulkhead stake gives the shooter category a second leg. One final contrast is what everplay simply does not have: exposure to the market's loudest keywords. The global tape and the past week of reporters are dominated by net tariff refunds and IEEPA recoveries — echoed at CULP, HOFT, LOVE, VRA, DBI and M, where tariff-refund language is near-boilerplate — alongside AI-datacenter capex. everplay mentions none of it. Its story is purely content-cycle: idiosyncratic and a clean read on execution, but with no macro tailwind to hide behind if the next launch slips.