Hacksaw Q3 Revenue Slows as Shares Plunge 29%

Key Points

• Hacksaw is bullishly predicting a Q3 revenue of €57.5m to €58.5m, which is a meagre increase of only 11% to 12% on last year’s haul.
• Shares closed at SEK 58.00 on 12th October, and in one day they fell by a staggering 28.83%. That’s a big drop.
• Revenue has been stuck near €58m all year long, even though this studio has been churning out more games than ever.

A Pre-Dawn Filing That Wiped Almost a Third Off Hacksaw, and Sent Investors Running

For most of 2026, Hacksaw was the darling of the slot studio set, a place where growth seemed almost endless. Then, at the crack of dawn on a Monday, a little filing landed in the investors’ inbox that told a very different story.

According to Hacksaw’s own preliminary trading update, revenue for the third quarter (July-Sept) is expected to come in between €57.5m and €58.5m. Last year’s Q3 brought in €52.0m, so growth has slowed right down to roughly 11% to 12%. Not exactly earth-shattering.

On paper, Hacksaw’s profit situation was a bit more encouraging, at least, for a while. Their adjusted operating profit was expected to be €48m to €49m, up from €42.1m, with the margin edging up to about 83%. But unfortunately, those profit figures didn’t exactly calm the nerves of investors in Stockholm. No, sir, Hacksaw’s shares lost almost a third of their value in one single day. They finished at SEK 58.00 on 12th October, down from SEK 81.50 on the previous Friday.

The company blamed softer market conditions and games that didn’t quite match up to previous quarters. They said results for their content business naturally can vary, and that their long-term financial targets remain unchanged. All these figures are still pretty preliminary, and we’ll get the actual numbers when the interim report drops on 3rd November.

Three Quarters, Flat Revenue, a Worrying Sign

Now, if you look at each quarter individually, the slowdown isn’t really a dip, it’s more like a plateau that’s been going on for months now. Hacksaw’s second-quarter interim report shows revenue of €57.6m in the first quarter and €59.3m in the second.

And if that preliminary range holds, the third quarter revenue is actually likely to be slightly lower than the second. Growth rates of up to 28% and 31% earlier this year mostly came from smaller comparison quarters from 2025, whereas in the third quarter of last year, revenue had jumped to €52.0m from €45.4m. So, when you look at it like that, a flat year is probably always going to show up in the headline growth figure.

But margins are actually looking a bit steadier than some folks were suggesting at first. Their adjusted operating margin was 82% in both Q1 and Q2 of 2026, before edging up to about 83% in Q3. And the 81% figure they had last year in Q3 actually looks pretty okay now.

And then there are the Q2 report details that now look kind of significant.

Analysts Were Expecting A Whole Different Kind of Quarter

Expectations were way higher, and that gap is what explains the wild sell-off we saw. Redeye’s analysis, which MarketScreener picked up on, was forecasting €64.2m in revenue and a €52.3m adjusted operating profit. They were banking on 24% growth, roughly double what actually happened.

Redeye thought it was weird that the growth came in so weak, especially given the high pace of new game launches from Hacksaw. They were expecting a lot more out of the firm.

Redeye now thinks they’ll need to chop their 2026 to 2028 forecasts by 5% to 10%. That being said, they still see 15% to 25% growth coming for the next 2 or 3 quarters, and then a return to 30% growth by the second half of 2027.

A Boardroom Change That’s Still Casting A Shadow

There have been some big changes at the top this year, which makes it harder to read this quarter. Just a few weeks after Christoffer Källberg reported 28% growth for the first quarter, the board canned him. They promptly brought in Ana Vrabic Verdir, a lawyer with expertise in M&A, to take the reins as interim chief.

In August, the Board did a search for a permanent CEO and came back with Vrabic Verdir. Chairman Patrick Svensk at the time said the Board ‘all agreed’ she was the person for the job. This week’s update is her first big test as permanent CEO, and her tone was pretty measured.

“Growth in the third quarter of 2026 was a bit more moderate than what we’ve seen in recent times,” Vrabic Verdir said. She also said that they continue to grow the customer base with new signings while pushing further into the markets of their existing customers.

Crash Games, OpenRGS And The Road To 3 November

Hacksaw’s recovery plan doesn’t rely on a single big bet. Instead, they’re going to grow through new and existing OpenRGS partners, and they’re talking to potential new partners for Hacksaw Ventures to expand their offer.

New verticals also figure in their plan, starting off with a crash game that came out at the end of the quarter. Their game page says that Moneyplane is due out on the 24th of September, just a week before the quarter ends.

By 3 November, investors will want some hard answers to 3 key questions: which markets were the ones that softened, how did their new titles do, and are they starting to see some signs of recovery in October?

Expert Analysis: More Games, Same Income, And A Target Nobody Should Believe

Our view is that the market has reacted in an appropriate way, maybe just a bit too late. The income level has been virtually stable since January, but the 30% growth target remains unchanged.

Our primary concern is in the calculations of the game library. Hacksaw has raised its internal productivity to five games per month, and 17 more titles have come from partner studios during Q2. However, the revenue stayed flat.

This opinion is our hypothesis, not a fact. The absence of the impact of the growing number of games on revenue implies lower performance of each new game in comparison with its predecessors. The higher share of the best ten games is another hint.

Moreover, the board should tell more to the shareholders. The CEO, who provided nearly 30% growth, was replaced due to the shift in strategic goals. After six months, investors still do not know what this strategy is all about.

Another question relates to capital allocation. In May, Hacksaw distributed a dividend of €116 million, which is equal to 81% of 2025 estimated profits, and described its investment in Hacksaw Ventures as very promising. These strategies may be appropriate, but they require different cash flow.

It would be unfair not to give the positive scenario a chance. As we mentioned above, on 3 September, according to a Simply Wall St analysis, the P/E ratio of Hacksaw was around 12.4x. This figure is much lower than the industry’s average. This was before this crash, and there is no interest-bearing debt.

Our decision is still not quite pleasant to Hacksaw long-term shareholders. The company is one of the most profitable producers, but the problem with its growth needs proper explanation. We will consider the target of 30% until 3 November.