Hacksaw Gaming Q3 2026: Growth Slows to 12%

Key Points

• Philippa Gregory is now in charge as operational CEO of Hacksaw Gaming, not the Group CEO of Hacksaw AB. A nice clarification right off the bat.
• Q3 revenue growth was just half of what it was in Q2, 12% compared to 31% back then, while the adjusted operating margin did manage a healthy increase to 83%.
• The management team is saying that 30% revenue growth is still their long-term goal, but with nine months of growth clocking in at 23% now they have to admit it’s a tough ask.

Hacksaw Gaming has just reported an adjusted operating margin of 83% for the third quarter. And just 3 November, the company shoehorned in its compliance chief Philippa Gregory as operational CEO of Hacksaw Gaming, with no connection made to the latest financial results. However, revenue growth did slow down to 12% from 31% in Q2.

Has Marcus Cordes’s move into the world of prediction markets simply been a planned change in roles or is it part of a roadmap that has hit a snag? Hacksaw is playing it pretty straight, just a coincidence.

Gregory Takes the Helm at Hacksaw Gaming as Cordes Shifts Focus to Prediction Markets

Gregory will be leading the Malta-based subsidiary Hacksaw Gaming. Ana Vrabic Verdir remains Group CEO of the parent company that gets listed. Gregory joined the company way back in April 2022 and only just made it to group management in January 2025. Prior to that she had a few stints in compliance roles at Bethard Group.

Gregory has stated her number one priority is to focus on the core business with “clear accountability, disciplined execution and a firm focus on profitable growth.” Fair enough.

Cordes on the other hand will be concentrating on building out Hacksaw Markets and getting its management team sorted. He thinks Philippa has always been the natural fit and gave the nod to her appointment.

Luke Hammett, someone who has been around for the company since the very early days, also gets a boost, he joins group management as chief commercial officer.

Profit Soars but Q3 Revenue Growth Slows to 12%

Hacksaw’s third quarter report is in and shows revenue of €58.1m, up a not too shabby 12% from €52.0m this time last year. Adjusted operating profit ticked up 15% to €48.3m which bumped the margin up to a tidy 83% from 81%.

Profit for the quarter jumped 18% to €45.7m, a healthy increase from €38.7m last year. Operating cash flow rose a nice 42% to €52.2m in fact it was 20% after taking out those pesky one-off items.

Revenue growth did slow through the year though. We saw 28% in Q1 and 31% in Q2 before it dropped to 12% in Q3. There was also a bit of a drop from Q2 to Q3, down about 2% to €59.3m.

Over the first nine months revenue climbed to €175.0m, up a very respectable 23%. Profit for that period jumped 36% to €136.9m

One thing to note is that the number of daily game rounds jumped 19% year on year, which is great to see, as players remain active. However, we did see revenue per game go down because the mix of games and operators changed around.

The top 10 games still bring in 52% of all gross gaming revenue, which is up from 45% last year. Hacksaw game developers have been working hard to get more titles out there and by the end of the period they had managed to release a whopping 399 games, almost double from 268 the same time last year.

Within Three Weeks Hacksaw Provides Another Explanation for the Company Slowdown

Hacksaw’s share price dropped on 12 October following the company’s release of a preliminary update. Shares fell by nearly 30% to SEK 57.80, NEXT.io reported.

Soft market conditions and the underperformance of games in comparison with previous periods were cited as reasons for the update. Three weeks later, Hacksaw provided more details on its own development plans in the interim report.

At the beginning of 2026, Hacksaw altered its game ratio and broadened its scope within specific markets. According to Verdir, this new game mix “has not produced the performance level we’ve seen in previous periods.”

She emphasised that the slowdown was a temporary situation, adding that the company has already adjusted the game mix on its roadmap.

Gregory’s appointment is also the third major leadership change in eleven months. In December 2025, Hacksaw appointed a new Group CFO. The board discharged Group CEO Christoffer Källberg from his position in April. Verdir, who was acting as interim CEO, became Group CEO on 20 August.

Earnings Call Discusses 30% Target, Brazil and Cash Position

The Q3 earnings call addressed whether the regulatory changes caused the company’s slowdown. Verdir stated that they did not.

According to Verdir, on average, each game takes 22 to 28 weeks to create. Thus, it may take some time before the new roadmap produces its effects.

The Brazilian regulated market closed down in early October after licenses for all authorised operators were withdrawn. The company stated that the market closure did not have any material impact on Hacksaw’s results. Management also added that no single market contributes more than 10% of revenues.

Hacksaw’s financial targets for the long term are annual revenue growth exceeding 30% and an adjusted EBIT margin above 80%. Verdir stated that “these targets are not set just for one specific year.”

As Citi analyst Jamie Bass calculated, to achieve 30% revenue growth in 2026, the company should grow approximately 48% in Q4. Management did not provide a response to the analyst’s forecast. When analysts asked management about trading in the current quarter, the company did not comment.

On 30 September, Hacksaw’s cash position was €148.2m against €87.8m in the same month last year. No interest-bearing debt was reported by the company.

Moreover, the board of directors authorised the repurchase of up to €20m worth of shares within a maximum of three years.

Hacksaw Prediction Markets Kicks Off Without Any Mention of Financial Targets

Hacksaw gave the world a B2B prediction markets platform back on October 15th, and that came with a nice bonus, a big licence from the Malta Gaming Authority to boot.

Here’s how it works: operators get to keep their own brand name and customer base, Hacksaw just supplies the tech behind it & pools all the player volume together across all the different operators.

Verdir said that Hacksaw is going to make its money off transaction fees, but they’re going to do that through a revenue share model, instead of some other way. And guess what, no one at the top is saying how much they expect to make from this whole deal.

The company is talking about a report by Bernstein which estimates that there is going to be a huge prediction market trading volume of around $1 trillion by 2030. Now, that number is talking about trading volume, not what Hacksaw is expecting to rake in.

Analyst Weighs In: Was the Hacksaw Shake Up A Good Move Or A Bad One? 2 Different Takes

We are with the camp that thinks Hacksaw’s explanation for the change in management is pretty plausible. But at the same time it does not answer every question about the whole thing. Cordes was a big fan of Gregory and is now going to be running another part of the business. And as for the management change being some sort of punishment, no filing says that, which is why we can say with authority that it is just not the case.

Still, there is something that has us scratching our heads: Cordes was running the company as operational CEO when the company changed its direction. And then the most recent report came out and said that the new game mix has not been doing so hot. By that, we mean it is not matching the performance Hacksaw was getting from their games earlier on. But, there is no paperwork that says that the two events are connected. It’s really up to you to decide whether you think they might be or not, because that is what it comes down to in the end: a bit of interpretation of timing rather than some hard provable fact.

Now it gets to the bit that really worries us: game concentration. In the first quarter the top 10 games made up 43% of the gross gaming revenue, then it jumped up to 49% in quarter 2 and then all the way up to 52% in the third quarter.

Just a few months ago the CFO said that 49% did not show any underlying trend at the time, but then the figure went up again, which makes it harder to go back on that now. We mean a single quarter could still be just a one-off, but for a studio that depends on a few big hits from games in order to make a profit, there is less wiggle room for a series of less than stellar releases.

Management is right to say that 30% growth might be the sort of target the company is working towards in the long run, but that still leaves a lot of investors itching for a clearer idea of exactly when that might happen instead of just saying ‘long term’. We mean investors are going to be looking back at the 9 months where the company actually grew at 23% or 27% if you take the currency changes into account. And then there is the fact that Q3 only managed to grow by 12%, which was 18 percentage points below the 30% they are talking about.

We’d love it if management could give a clearer idea of when they are hoping to actually reach that 30% growth level instead of just using this rather vague phrase ‘long term’.

It looks like Hacksaw is really going to be putting more of a focus on regulatory requirements now that Gregory is in the job. She has a lot of experience with all the changing rules and regulations in different countries, like in Brazil where the regulated market has just closed down. The prediction markets business will also need to sort through all the different licences to get up and running. So we read this as a big hint that the company will be taking it more seriously.

And finally, there is this €20m buyback, that’s about 14% of the cash that the company has in the bank and roughly 1.3% of its market value when you look at the share price from back in October. And honestly? We don’t think that is going to do a whole lot to rescue the share price. The CFO even mentioned that they are planning on using the shares that get repurchased for something else instead of just putting them back on the market.

Gregory took over on December 1st with a nice operating margin of 83%, which is a pretty big number, but also a top-10 game concentration of 52%.