Third-quarter earnings for Light & Wonder, reported November 5, were its last as a publicly traded U.S. company. Henceforth, the game manufacturer will be traded only on the Australian bourse; company CEO Matt Wilson pointedly called it “a market attuned to the gaming industry.”
Light & Wonder’s third-quarter earnings call was dogged by technical glitches, one of which muzzled Wilson at length during the question-and-answer session. Slides meant to illustrate the presentation were often blurred and illegible.
“We delivered 18 percent growth, so clearly we’re ahead of our expectations,” Wilson replied when asked why Light & Wonder had exceeded its third-quarter guidance. “It’s a powerhouse of a business for us.” Added CFO Oliver Chow, “The quality of our recurring-revenue business continues to be very strong.”
Newly obtained Grover Gaming was a key point of Light & Wonder’s presentation. It installed 292 more units in the quarter, booked $40 million in revenue, and opened a new game-development studio in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Said Wilson, “Our focus remains on the seamless integration of Grover.” He added that United States revenue per day was up five percent, largely on the strength of the newcomer.
“The team’s doing a fantastic job of integrating into the Light & Wonder family,” the CEO said of Grover, which was readying to launch in Indiana. “It’s going to be a big and vibrant market. Things are setting up very nicely.”
Light & Wonder shipped 6,000 units in the third quarter and just entered the skill-games market in Nebraska. As for its Global Gaming Expo presentations in October, “The feedback was overwhelmingly positive.”
Internationally, the non-recurrence of a larger order from Entain didn’t help third-quarter results. Also, market share was “a little depressed” on Light & Wonder’s Australian home turf, but 2026 growth was envisioned. Asia was said to be new property- and expansion-driven, but “we’re keeping share nicely.”
Turning to social and igaming, Wilson said of SciPlay, “We continue to see significant progress on our direct-to-consumer platform.” He felt the environment for social gaming would continue to improve as efforts ramped up to curb sweepstakes games.
With regard to social play, Wilson said stabilization of market share was “really a Jackpot Party-specific issue … a very mature game within a very complicated economy.” He said SciPlay was trying to rebuild engagement levels and, “We’re seeing some stabilization of that game over time,” while porting the lessons learned into other game products.
In igaming, Light & Wonder recorded record revenues and a 16 percent increase, “underpinned by first-party content proliferation in the U.S.” Handle rose 23 percent to $23 billion. “There is genuine player affinity for our igaming franchise,” Wilson reported.
International unit sales were down, but Wilson expected “sizable” orders in the United Kingdom and Asia. North American sales boosted Light & Wonder’s table games services, which were up six percent. Also, Huff ’n Puff was reported to constitute five percent of the U.S. igaming product on its own, while Pirates Four was manifesting record results overseas.
Light & Wonder had also been green-lit for igaming deployment in the Philippines during the quarter. “International expansion remains an opportunity for growth,” Wilson observed.
Wide-area progressive games drove higher revenues per day, reported Chow, returning the discussion to terrestrial gambling. The cost of exiting the live-dealer business, he added, continued to reverberate into 2026, but the inclusion of Grover would accelerate Light & Wonder’s amortization and depreciation schedules.
Domestically, Chow expected Light & Wonder’s tax rate to remain in the 21 percent-to-24 percent range. Debt stood at a 3:1 ratio to cash flow, while $1 billion in new notes had been issued, partly to redeem prior debt at 6.25 percent interest and partly to add cash to the balance sheet.
Previewing the fourth quarter, Chow said the company had bought back $101 million worth of shares, marking the redemption of $765 million of a $1.5 billion repurchase. He also cautioned that the company’s leverage might rise in the near term.
On other fourth-quarter topics, Chow said that Light & Wonder intended to continue monetizing Grover, as well as ship VLT units to Canada. He also expected a pickup in international sales, saying, “We continue to maintain our share in Asia.”
Tariffs, the CFO said, had cost the company $5 million to $9 million, but 2025 would be “another double-digit-growth year for us.” The company, he stressed, wouldn’t sacrifice long-term goals in order to achieve short-term benchmarks.
Chow said that the company had been reviewing pricing, software, and hardware strategies for what he emphasized was an industry-wide issue. “We’ll work with our partners and customers to make sure we have a positive outcome.”
Tariffs haven’t dampened demand for Light & Wonder products. “The market’s been very resilient,” Wilson observed. “It wobbled a little in the second quarter, right after Liberation Day, for obvious reasons.”
“The consumer looks resilient,” the CEO added. “That’s flowing into gross gaming revenue,” Wilson said, adding that his customers might take advantage of accelerated depreciation in order to speed up their slot-replacement cycles.
Asked why research-and-development spending was down six percent in the quarter, Chow replied, “That’s the foundation of our business” and was actually still 17 percent of Light & Wonder’s revenue allocation. “I don’t think Matt and I have said ‘no’ yet” to R&D expenditures.
“Q3 was a fantastic result for the team,” Wilson summarized, “which leaves a neater glide path into the fourth quarter. We launched more games this year than any time in our history,” with premium games especially successful.
This was Light & Wonder’s final earnings call prior to its NASDAQ delisting on November 14. Concluded Wilson, “This is not the end. We would love you to continue the journey on the ASX.”
