Except for the company’s SciPlay subsidiary, all divisions of Light & Wonder reported higher revenue in the first quarter of 2025. Although revenues for SciPlay dipped two percent to $202 million, its cash flow increased three percent. Also, revenue per average daily player grew five percent to $1.06.
Light & Wonder recorded a profit of $82 million, consistent with the year-previous results. Revenue expanded from $756 million to $774 million. Cash flow was up from $281 million in the first quarter of 2024 to $311 million.
The company also repurchased 1.9 million shares of stock at a cost of $166 million. It closed on an $800 million loan with a three-year maturity to underwrite the purchase of Grover Gaming.
Turning to ongoing issues, Light & Wonder executives said they finished an external review of all the company’s hold-and-spin games, looking for artifacts of Aristocrat Leisure game mathematics. “Our experts found no evidence that Aristocrat math values were used in any of these games,” they reported.
Light & Wonder also found itself contending with new tariffs, potentially affecting their suppliers in Asia in general and China in particular. “We’ve evaluated various mitigation strategies, including but not limited to supplier diversification, adjusting supply chain operations, supplier pricing negotiations, and cost-control initiatives, among other measures,” including increased unspecified operational efficiency.
“While we expect recent tariffs and trade policies to create incremental cost pressures in the near term, our realized and ongoing operational efficiency initiatives coupled with other measures are expected to mitigate these effects,” the earnings release continued. It reiterated longstanding cash-flow guidance of $1.4 billion for the year.
Said CEO Matt Wilson, “Our R&D investment, array of product offerings, and content strategy continue to deliver success in game deployment and franchise expansions. We remain confident in the various avenues of growth that we see for 2025 with continued execution on our robust product roadmap driving performance across the business.”
CFO Oliver Chow called the quarter “further testament to our commitment to value creation as we generated strong cash flow coupled with another meaningful quarter of share buyback. … The initiatives and processes that we have in place enable us to remain nimble and adaptable to a dynamic environment and positions us well to be a sustainable compounder of growth well into the future.”
Light & Wonder ended the quarter with $134 million cash on hand. Debt was $3.9 billion.
