SKLZ (2025 - Q2)

Release Date: Aug 07, 2025

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Stock Data provided by Financial Modeling Prep

Current Financial Performance

Skillz Inc. Q2 2025 Financial Highlights

$27 million
Revenue
+8%
146,000
Paying MAU
+20%
$10 million
Adjusted EBITDA Loss
-17%
$9 million
Net Loss

Key Financial Metrics

Q2 2025 Key Ratios

$5 million
R&D Expense
17%
R&D % of Revenue
$18 million
Sales & Marketing Expense
62%
Sales & Marketing % of Revenue
$8 million
G&A Expense
49%
G&A % of Revenue

Period Comparison Analysis

Revenue

$27 million
Current
Previous:$25 million
8% YoY

Revenue

$27 million
Current
Previous:$21 million
28.6% QoQ

Paying MAU

146,000
Current
Previous:122,000
19.7% YoY

Paying MAU

146,000
Current
Previous:124,000
17.7% QoQ

Adjusted EBITDA Loss

$10 million
Current
Previous:$13 million
23.1% YoY

Adjusted EBITDA Loss

$10 million
Current
Previous:$16 million
37.5% QoQ

Net Income / Loss

-$9 million
Current
Previous:$26 million
65.4% YoY

Net Loss

-$9 million
Current
Previous:-$15 million
40% QoQ

Cash Position

$239 million
Current
Previous:$264 million
9.5% QoQ

Financial Health & Ratios

Total Debt

$129.7 million

Q2 2025

Cash & Equivalents

$239 million

Q2 2025

Surprises

30% Sequential Revenue Growth

30%

$27 million

Q2 GAAP revenue was $27 million, up 30% sequentially and up 8% year-over-year.

18% Sequential Growth in Paying MAU

18%

146,000 paying MAU

Q2 paying MAU was 146,000, up from 124,000 in Q1 2025 and 122,000 in Q2 2024, which is 18% growth quarter-over-quarter and 20% growth year-over-year.

36% Sequential Improvement in Adjusted EBITDA Loss

36%

$10 million loss

Q2 adjusted EBITDA loss of $10 million, better than a loss of $16 million in Q1 2025 and a loss of $13 million in Q2 2024, which is an improvement of 36% quarter-over-quarter and 17% year-over-year.

16% Decrease in Sales and Marketing Expenses Year-over-Year

$18 million

Sales and marketing expenses were $18 million, down 16% year-over-year.

Launch of ACH Deposit and Instant Withdrawal

ACH deposit and instant withdrawal launched

We introduced ACH deposit and instant withdrawal, positioning Skillz as a leader in withdrawal times while providing players with funding optionality.

Impact Quotes

Q2 GAAP revenue was $27 million, up from $21 million in Q1 2025 and $25 million in Q2 2024. Excluding one-time adjustments, revenue grew 22% quarter-over-quarter and 4% year-over-year.

Q2 paying MAU was 146,000, up from 124,000 in Q1 2025 and 122,000 in Q2 2024, which is 18% growth quarter-over-quarter and 20% growth year-over-year.

Q2 adjusted EBITDA loss of $10 million, better than a loss of $16 million in Q1 2025 and a loss of $13 million in Q2 2024, which is an improvement of 36% quarter-over-quarter and 17% year-over-year.

We enhanced our loyalty program in Q2, marking one of the most significant platform changes in several years, introducing secured milestones, personalized incentives and one of the largest monthly prize pools in mobile gaming.

We introduced ACH deposit and instant withdrawal, positioning Skillz as a leader in withdrawal times while providing players with funding optionality.

We launched the first version of our Skillz Arcade, a single app experience that allows players to seamlessly switch between more than a dozen games.

The court recently issued a public order that Papaya must unseal its admission of its historical use of bots and references to its executives' assertions of their rights against self-incrimination under the fifth amendment.

Q2 net loss of $9 million compares to a net income of $26 million in the same quarter last year. Excluding an insurance recovery in Q2 and $46 million in Avia settlement in the prior year, Q2 net loss improved by $3 million year-over-year.

Notable Topics Discussed

  • Skillz continues to pursue litigation against Papaya and Voodoo for their alleged use of bots, which undermines fair competition and consumer trust.
  • The cases are ongoing in the Southern District of New York, with Papaya ordered to unseal documents admitting to bot use and referencing executives' assertions of Fifth Amendment rights.
  • Management emphasizes that eliminating bot fraud is critical for protecting players and restoring industry trust, viewing this as essential for shareholder value and fair competition.
  • Skillz launched significant platform updates in Q2, including a revamped loyalty program with secured milestones, personalized incentives, and large monthly prize pools, aimed at increasing high-value user engagement.
  • Introduction of ACH deposit and instant withdrawal features positioned Skillz as a leader in transaction speed, addressing previous pain points and improving user experience.
  • The launch of Skillz Arcade, a single app experience with over a dozen games, aims to build a large prize-based competition app, supporting long-term content pipeline and user retention.
  • Q2 GAAP revenue was $27 million, up from $21 million in Q1 2025 and $25 million in Q2 2024, with a 22% quarter-over-quarter growth excluding onetime adjustments.
  • Paying MAU increased to 146,000, an 18% rise from Q1 and 20% from Q2 2024, driven by new platform launches and effective marketing.
  • Adjusted EBITDA loss improved to $10 million from $16 million in Q1, reflecting progress toward profitability despite ongoing investments and operational costs.
  • Aarki, Skillz’s AI-powered ad tech business, rolled out SKAN4 native privacy-centric models on iOS, enhancing acquisition and retention without relying on IDFA.
  • On Android, Aarki improved its deep learning training to GPU-accelerated processes, enabling real-time bid optimization at scale with over 1 billion examples per day.
  • These innovations expand Aarki’s market reach, improve ROAS for clients, and strengthen integration with Skillz’s platform, supporting revenue growth.
  • Skillz committed $75 million over three years to its Developer Accelerator program to support new game development and diversify content offerings.
  • Early deliverables from the product roadmap are beginning to benefit both players and developers, indicating progress in long-term content pipeline generation.
  • The company is actively investing in various game genres, aiming to create successful hits and sustain platform engagement.
  • Skillz is strengthening its global team by hiring across product, marketing, analytics, and operations, contributing to recent quarterly results.
  • These hires are part of a strategic effort to enhance platform features, marketing effectiveness, and operational efficiency.
  • Management emphasizes that organizational growth is aligned with their goal of scaling the platform and improving user experience.
  • Q2 saw a 18% increase in paying MAU, reaching 146,000, driven by new platform launches and targeted marketing to both new and lapsed users.
  • Marketing spend was reduced compared to previous quarters, yet the volume of new paying users increased, indicating improved marketing efficiency.
  • Management expects ongoing optimization of customer acquisition costs and scaling of traffic to support path to profitability.
  • Skillz’s ongoing litigation efforts aim to eliminate bot use by competitors like Papaya and Voodoo, which they believe damages industry integrity.
  • Recent court orders require Papaya to unseal admissions of bot use and references to executives' Fifth Amendment assertions.
  • Management underscores that fair competition and trust are core to Skillz’s values and industry leadership.
  • Management states that current valuation does not reflect the combined value of Skillz’s operating platform and progress toward strategic goals.
  • They express confidence that executing their business strategy will generate returns for shareholders.
  • The company is focused on improving cash burn and operational efficiency to unlock value.
  • Q2 net loss was $9 million, with ongoing expenses in R&D, sales, and G&A, reflecting investments in platform development and market expansion.
  • Despite cost reductions in marketing spend, the company continues to face operational challenges related to scaling and compliance.
  • Management highlights efforts to improve cash flow and control costs while investing in growth initiatives.

Key Insights:

  • Management expects continued steady strides toward profitability and shareholder value creation.
  • Skillz aims to return to consistent top-line growth and positive adjusted EBITDA.
  • The company expects to file its Form 10-K within the 6-month extension period granted by the NYSE.
  • The company plans to continue optimizing customer acquisition costs while scaling traffic strategically.
  • The fair play initiative and litigation efforts are expected to protect players and restore trust in the industry.
  • Aarki ad tech business rolled out SKAN4 privacy-centric models and GPU-accelerated training for real-time bid optimization.
  • Committed $75 million over 3 years to the Developer Accelerator program to support new content creation.
  • Enhanced loyalty program with secured milestones, personalized incentives, and a large monthly prize pool.
  • Introduced ACH deposit and instant withdrawal, improving withdrawal times significantly.
  • Key hires across product, marketing, analytics, and operations teams strengthened the organization.
  • Launched Skillz Arcade, a single app experience allowing seamless switching between multiple games.
  • CEO Andrew Paradise emphasized progress toward top-line growth and positive adjusted EBITDA.
  • CEO noted that current valuation does not reflect the combined value of the operating platform and progress made.
  • CFO Gaetano Franceschi detailed cost management efforts and improving cash burn flexibility.
  • Management highlighted the importance of eliminating bot fraud to protect players and maintain industry trust.
  • The company is focused on improving player and developer engagement and retention through platform innovation.
  • No questions were asked during the Q&A session.
  • Ongoing litigation against Papaya and Voodoo for alleged bot use is a key focus.
  • The company is working diligently to regain compliance with NYSE listing standards.
  • The court ordered Papaya to unseal admissions of bot use and executive assertions of Fifth Amendment rights.
  • General and administrative expenses were 49% of revenue excluding stock compensation and insurance recovery.
  • Paid user conversion rate improved to 19% in Q2 from 15% a year ago.
  • Research and development expenses increased 13% year-over-year, representing 17% of revenue excluding stock compensation.
  • Sales and marketing expenses decreased 16% year-over-year, with marketing spend optimized.
Complete Transcript:
SKLZ:2025 - Q2
Operator:
Good afternoon all. I'd like to welcome you all to the Skillz Inc. Second Quarter 2025 Results Call. My name is Elliott, and I'll be moderating your call today. [Operator Instructions] I'll now turn the conference call over to your host, Joe Jaffoni from JCIR to begin. Please go ahead. Joseph N
Joseph N. Jaffoni:
JCIR:
This afternoon, Skillz issued its 2025 second quarter earnings release, which is available on the company's Investor Relations website. The company is in the process of completing its unaudited interim financial statements and other disclosures for the second quarter ended June 30, 2025. Accordingly, we are announcing preliminary results for the second quarter, which are based on currently available information and are subject to revision. Actual results may differ from these preliminary financial results and other financial information as final adjustments and developments may arise between now and the time the results are finalized. In the event the company determines it will not file its quarterly report on Form 10-Q by the prescribed deadline, it will file an extension on Form 12b-25 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which may include further disclosure. The company is also completing the financial statements and other disclosures for the year ended December 31, 2024. We were unable to file our annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2024, and we previously announced we received a notice from the NYSE that the company was not in compliance with its listing standards. The company is working diligently to complete the necessary work to file the Form 10-K as soon as practicable and currently expects to file the Form 10-K within the 6-month period granted by the NYSE notice. Additionally, the company intends to take the necessary steps to achieve compliance with the applicable NYSE listing standards as soon as practical. Before I turn the call over to Skillz' Founder and CEO, Andrew Paradise, please note that management's comments today may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Forward-looking statements, which are usually identified by the use of words such as will, expect, should or other similar phrases, are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from what we expect. Therefore, you should exercise caution in interpreting and relying on them. We refer you to the company's SEC filings for a more detailed discussion of the risks that could impact future operating results and financial condition. During the call, management will discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which it believes can be useful in evaluating the company's operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP. The reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in the company's second quarter 2025 earnings release. With that, I'll turn the call over to Andrew for some opening remarks, followed by a review of the financial performance from Skillz' CFO, Gaetano Franceschi, before we open the call for questions. Andrew?
Andrew C. Paradise:
Thank you, Joe, and good afternoon. I want to begin today's call by providing some key quarterly financial updates before turning to our fair play initiative and litigation updates. Q2 GAAP revenue was $27 million, up from $21 million in Q1 2025 and $25 million in Q2 2024. Excluding onetime adjustments, revenue grew 22% quarter-over-quarter and 4% year-over-year. Q2 paying MAU was 146,000, up from 124,000 in Q1 2025 and 122,000 in Q2 2024, which is 18% growth quarter-over-quarter and 20% growth year- over-year. Q2 adjusted EBITDA loss of $10 million, better than a loss of $16 million in Q1 2025 and a loss of $13 million in Q2 2024, which is an improvement of 36% quarter-over-quarter and 17% year-over-year. Taken together, these results reflect continued progress toward returning Skillz to consistent top line growth and positive adjusted EBITDA. Moving now on to the first of our 4 pillars. During the quarter, we made significant progress in enhancing our platform to improve player and developer engagement retention. When we discuss this pillar, we consider both short- and long-term innovation across our platform. That means improving our player experience and enhancing developer features, while prioritizing projects that will support new content, which in the gaming industry can have a long time line from development to market readiness. In the quarter, our product teams delivered several platform launches contributing to our quarterly sequential revenue growth. We enhanced our loyalty program in Q2, marking one of the most significant platform changes in several years. We recalibrated rewards to incentivize players to become high-value users without negatively impacting retention. The revamped program introduced secured milestones, personalized incentives and one of the largest monthly prize pools in mobile gaming. This initiative paired with improvements to our trophy system and live event experience are being well received by our players. Additionally, we introduced ACH deposit and instant withdrawal, positioning Skillz as a leader in withdrawal times while providing players with funding optionality. Our previous average withdrawal time line was a known pain point for some players. We listen to player feedback and implement a solution that makes us one of the fastest and safest platforms to transact within our category. We also launched the first version of our Skillz Arcade, a single app experience that allows players to seamlessly switch between more than a dozen games. Our goal is to build one of the largest single apps for prize-based competition with additional features to be layered in as we continue to improve the arcade experience. We previously discussed our long-term focus on new content pipeline generation, including a 3-year commitment of $75 million to support the Developer Accelerator program. This program aims to help defray costs for developers and encourage them to build their games for our platform as they work to create the next successful hit. Since announcing this in February, we've identified several opportunities to invest in a variety of genres. While there's still a lot of work to be done, we're encouraged to see some of the early deliverables from our product road map benefiting the player and developer experience. With respect to up-leveling our organization, we continue to strengthen our global team. This includes key hires across our product, marketing, analytics and operations teams that contributed to this quarter's results. For our third pillar, our go-to-market focus on user acquisition and monetization. This has been an area where we saw significant improvement with meaningful quarter-over-quarter growth in paying MAU. To highlight again, paying MAU or MAU for Q2 grew 18% versus Q1 with 146,000 PMAU, representing our highest level in 7 quarters. The improvement in PMAU is primarily driven by new platform launches and effective marketing to new and lapsed users. User acquisition spend in Q2 was lower than recent quarters, while we increased the volume of new paying users. We will continue to optimize customer acquisition costs while strategically scaling traffic. We believe our improved marketing efficiency and execution on our product road map will continue to benefit our monetization efforts, on our progress to demonstrate a clear path to profitability. With the information just provided, we believe we are making the steady strides needed to achieve our goal of generating positive adjusted EBITDA. While we talked in detail about the sequential growth of the platform business, I'd also like to highlight that Aarki's revenue growth is also accelerating. This AI-powered ad tech business is continuing to innovate in the mobile marketing space, and we're pleased with the team's execution across their strategic initiatives. In the quarter, Aarki delivered 2 key innovations. On iOS, it rolled out SKAN4 native privacy-centric models that drive both acquisition and retention without IDFA, identifier for advertiser, reliance. On Android, Aarki moved its top-of-funnel deep learning to graphics processing unit accelerated training on over 1 billion examples per day, enabling real-time bid optimization at scale. These advances expand Aarki's addressable market, sharpen ROAS for its customers and strengthen the integration with Skillz competition platform. With both businesses growing revenue, we're pleased with the progress in Q2. Turning to an update on our fair play initiative. As we discussed on previous calls, protecting players and preserving fair competition is core to our values. We continue to pursue litigation against Papaya and Voodoo games for their alleged use of bots, a practice we believe undermines consumer trust and harms the entire industry. These 2 cases are ongoing in the Southern District of New York, and Papaya and Voodoo will have to answer to U.S. laws and U.S. consumers they have, in our opinion, defrauded. With respect to our Papaya litigation, the court recently issued a public order that Papaya must unseal, and I'll quote from the order, "One, its admission of its historical use of bots; and two, references to its executives' assertions of their rights against self-incrimination under the fifth amendment." We believe the elimination of bot fraud is critical to protecting players and restoring trust in this industry that we pioneered. As a leading U.S.-based platform for fair skill-based competition, we're confident that a level playing field, one that does not include the use of bots, will benefit players and shareholders. I'll conclude my comments by reiterating our view that our current valuation gives no weight to the combined value of our operating platform and the progress we've made towards achieving our goals. As we continue to execute on our business strategy, we expect our unique platform to generate returns for our shareholders. And with that, I'll turn it over to Gaetano.
Gaetano Franceschi:
Thank you, Andrew, and good afternoon, everyone. Turning to the second quarter financial results, revenue was $27 million, up 30% sequentially and up 8% year-over-year. Excluding onetime adjustments, revenue grew 22% sequentially and 4% year-over-year. Paying MAU of 146,000 was up 18% sequentially and up 20% year-over-year. Our paid user conversion rate, which is paying MAU divided by MAU, was 19% in Q1, up from 15% a year ago. Turning to costs and expenses. Research and development expenses were $5 million, up 13% year-over-year. Excluding stock- based compensation, R&D expenses were 17% of Q2 revenue. Sales and marketing expenses were $18 million, down 16% year- over-year. Excluding stock-based compensation, sales and marketing expenses were 62% of Q2 revenue. Q2 UA marketing was $3 million, while Q2 engagement marketing was $9 million. General and administrative expenses were $8 million. Excluding stock- based compensation and funds received as part of an insurance settlement in Q2, G&A expenses were 49% of Q2 revenue. Q2 net loss of $9 million compares to a net income of $26 million in the same quarter last year. Excluding an insurance recovery in Q2 and $46 million in Avia settlement in the prior year, Q2 net loss improved by $3 million year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA loss in the second quarter was $10 million, up 36% sequentially and up 17% year-over-year. Net cash used in operating activities for Q2 was $21 million. Excluding litigation settlements, insurance recovery and the semiannual debt payment, Q2 net cash used in operating activities was $8 million. We ended the second quarter with $239 million of cash, comprised of $229 million in cash and cash equivalents and $10 million in restricted cash. At the end of Q2, we had $129.7 million of total principal due on our outstanding debt. With our improving cash burn, we have the flexibility to deploy capital to enhance shareholder value. At this time, we'll turn the call back to the operator for the Q&A session.
Operator:
[Operator Instructions] We have no questions at this time. So ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our Q&A and today's conference call. We'd like to thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.

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