Earnings call transcript: GCL Global Holdings sees Q4 2025 revenue surge

GCL Global Holdings Ltd. reported a robust financial performance for the fourth quarter of 2025, with a significant year-on-year revenue increase of 45.7% to $142 million. The company returned to profitability, marking a stark contrast to the previous year’s net loss of $2 million. Currently trading at $2.90, InvestingPro analysis suggests the stock is slightly overvalued relative to its Fair Value. Despite recent price movements, the company remains optimistic about future growth, supported by strategic initiatives and market trends.

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Key Takeaways

• Revenue grew 45.7% year-on-year to $142 million.
• GCL returned to profitability, reversing last year’s $2 million net loss.
• Game publishing revenue soared from $3.4 million to $16 million.
• The stock price decreased by 4.61% to $3.04 post-earnings announcement.
• Strategic investments and acquisitions are expected to drive future growth.

Company Performance

GCL Global Holdings demonstrated a strong performance in Q4 2025, significantly boosting its revenue and profitability. The company’s strategic focus on expanding its game publishing capabilities and securing global publishing rights for key titles contributed to its financial success. The gaming market’s demand for AAA titles and transmedia adaptations further bolstered GCL’s position in the industry.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $142 million, up 45.7% year-on-year.
• Gross profit: Increased by 59.5% to RMB 21 million.
• EBITDA: Nearly 10x growth to $10.8 million.
• Game publishing revenue: Rose from $3.4 million to $16 million.

Market Reaction

Despite the strong financial performance, GCL Global Holdings’ stock price currently stands at $2.90, trading at a P/E ratio of 71.55x. While the stock has shown strong returns over the past three months, it remains significantly below its 52-week high of $15.55. The company’s Financial Health Score of 1.91 (FAIR) on InvestingPro suggests moderate stability amid market volatility.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking ahead, GCL Global Holdings anticipates continued growth in FY 2026, driven by the upcoming demand for Nintendo Switch 2 games, the stabilization of the Banleong acquisition, and an expanded distribution reach. The company plans to invest further in IP development and explore transmedia expansion opportunities for its game properties.

Executive Commentary

Sebastian Tocque, Group CEO, described FY 2025 as a transformative year for GCL Global Holdings. He emphasized the company’s strategic positioning to capitalize on IP adaptations across various mediums, enhancing potential monetization. Tocque also highlighted that the company’s publishing strategy extends beyond financial considerations, focusing on long-term value creation.

Risks and Challenges

• Market volatility: Fluctuations in stock price may affect investor confidence.
• Competitive pressures: Intense competition in the gaming industry could impact market share.
• Integration risks: Challenges in integrating acquisitions like Banleong may affect operational efficiency.
• Economic conditions: Macroeconomic factors could influence consumer spending on gaming products.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about GCL’s operating expenses, gross margin potential, and future acquisition criteria. Management highlighted their focus on optimizing expenses and maintaining flexibility in acquisitions to pursue value-adding opportunities.

Full transcript - GCL Global Holdings Ltd (GCL) Q4 2025:

Conference Operator: Good morning, and welcome to GCL’s FY twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. All participants are in listen only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. Please note that this call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Crocker Colson, Investor Relations for GCL Global Holdings.

Mr. Colson, the floor is yours.

Crocker Colson, Investor Relations, GCL Global Holdings: Thank you so much. Hello, everybody, and thank you for joining us to review GCL’s FY twenty twenty five full year results. This morning, GCL posted both the earnings release and the related investor presentation to our website, and you can find that at gclglobalholdings.com. I’m pleased to say that with us on the call today, we have Sebastian Tocque, GCL’s Group CEO, and we also have Kenny Lin, GCL’s Group Chief Financial Officer. After the prepared remarks have been concluded, we’re going to open up this call to your questions.

But before we begin, some statements in this teleconference will be forward looking within the meaning of the federal securities laws. Although we believe these statements are reasonable, we can provide no assurance that they will prove to be accurate because they are prospective in nature. Actual results may differ materially from those discussed today, and we do encourage you to review our most recent filings with the SEC for a discussion of risk factors that could materially impact our results. As I mentioned, the earnings release is available at ir.gclglobalholdings.com. And again, we encourage you to review the reconciliations of certain non GAAP measures contained within.

With those formalities now out of the way, it’s my great pleasure to turn the call over to Sebastian Tocque, Group CEO. Sebastian, over to you.

Sebastian Tocque, Group CEO, GCL Global Holdings: Thank you, Parker. Hello, everyone. I’m Sebastian, Group CEO of GCL. And it’s with a great pleasure to be speaking you with you today on our first full year earnings call since our Nasdaq listing on February. Today, I’ll be taking you through the performance of financial year ended 03/31/2025, which we refer to as FY 2025.

So the group has grown significantly the past twelve months, and I’ll also provide you with some perspective on what drove our performance and the strategic direction we’re taking as we continue building out and strengthening our financial profile along with our strategy towards both innovation and growth in the years ahead. For those of you who are dialing in from the computer and would like a visual aid to this call, as mentioned by Crocker, our FY twenty twenty five earnings presentation is also available in the Investor Relations page for you to download and to refer to as well. So with that, let’s look at our achievements for FY twenty five. Now FY twenty five was truly a transformative year for GCL Global Holdings. Not only did we become a public company during FY 2025, we also delivered the strongest year of growth in our company’s history, both in absolute revenue and in percentage terms.

More importantly, the group returned to profitability this year, reversing a loss from FY 2024. This turnaround reflects the underlying strength of our operating model, the scalability of our platform and the successful execution of our strategic initiatives. The growth this year was broad based with strong contributions across three of our four business segments. Our Gain Distribution division saw a particularly strong uplift in FY 2025, largely supported by the global release of several highly anticipated AAA game titles that drove an industry wide surge in consumer demand. So among these titles, we have titles such as Black Myth Wukong, Shin Megami Tensei five, Metaphor Reef and Tazio, Elden Ring Shadow of the Earth Tree, NBA two k two five, Sonic X Shadow Generations, Warhammer 40 k Space Marine two, Dragon Ball, Civilization seven, and Monster Hunter Wilds.

So these titles were among some of our best selling titles for FY ’25, and this is also reflected by the 30% year on year growth in the number of game copies sold in FY 2025. For the financial year of FY 2025, we saw distribution growth anomaly where we had grown from 5,000,000 copies of games sold in FY 2024 to 6,500,000 copies of games sold in FY 2025. These marquee releases not only invigorated retail and digital demand, but also translated into materially higher sell through volumes across core distribution markets. An example of this would be our role as a global physical publisher for Blackmaid Wukong, a AAA title where we manage the global launch of physical copies of the game, including the Collectors Edition Units. The success of the game has truly boosted our credibility in publishing and distribution across global markets.

While we expect Blackmoon to continue generating long tail revenue over subsequent periods, we saw the bulk of its revenue generation during its first year of launch. However, we believe subsequent downloadable content will be a catalyst for a boost in sales from the title again. Moving

Kenny Lin, Group Chief Financial Officer, GCL Global Holdings: on

Sebastian Tocque, Group CEO, GCL Global Holdings: to the game publishing front, we continue to expand our pipeline and deliver content that resonates with regional and global audiences. FY 2025 marked continued traction in our strategy to publish high potential titles, which includes titles that have launched as well as those that have yet to be launched as of FY ’25, such as Black Mage Fukong, Atomic Heart, Japan Drift Master, Stalker two, Mandra Gora, Survivor Instinct, Theratech Worlds, First Dwarf, Figment two and Dayman nineteen ninety four. In line with our growth strategy in developing and investing into game IP, we made a strategic investment of a 20% equity stake in NetComm Inc. This is an emerging but widely respected studio based in Asia. With this investment, this marks GCL’s first equity partnership with a game development studio and an important milestone in our concerted effort to move upstream into IP development.

As part of this transaction, GCL secured global publishing rights to NetComm’s upcoming game, American Story, a title that we believe has the potential to be one of the most culturally distinctive and globally resonant IP that will be released. What gives us added confidence in the title’s breakout potential is the engagement it has already generated ahead of the release. As of today, Showa America’s Story has a total of more than two eighty million collective views across social media platforms. This includes both direct video views, third party content coverage spanning YouTube, TikTok, Bilibili, and other global channels. This level of organic prerelease traction is truly rare, and we believe it’s a strong indicator of global audience interest.

The narrative universe of Showa American story as well lends itself well to future transmedia adaptation opportunities, including animation, web series, merchandise, and more. At GCL, we believe strongly in the long term value of owning or co owning culturally distinctive game IPs that can transcend formats and show our American story truly represents our first step in this direction. With that, I will turn the call over to our Group CFO, Kenny Lin, to discuss this year’s results.

Kenny Lin, Group Chief Financial Officer, GCL Global Holdings: Thank you, Sebastian. Fiscal year twenty five was a year of record growth. We achieved the strongest financial performance yet in our company’s history, and this can be highlighted through the key items such as group revenue that grew by 45.7% year on year against FY 2024 to $142,000,000 Gross profit growth exceeded that of revenues, increasing 59.5% year on year to RMB 21,000,000 as compared to the last fiscal year. These were primarily driven by the success of the uplift in revenue across game distribution and game publishing boosted by the launch of Blackmith Wukong. Two games digital distribution platform has also surpassed the 8,000 game threshold, an increase from just over 7,000 games last year, broadening our product offering and volume.

Group net income saw record growth as we returned to profitability in FY twenty five, reversing the first ever record net loss in the company’s history of negative 2,000,000 in f y two four. This debt was impacted mainly by listing expenses to a net income of million dollars in FY 2025. EBITDA similarly grew close to 10x to $10,800,000 from just $1,000,000 in FY ’24. While game distribution is still the main contributor of the group’s total revenue at around 86%, we’ve had a marked increase in game publishing of almost three x demonstrating substantial growth in f y two five to 16,000,000 from 3,400,000.0 in f y two four. Game publishing’s revenue contribution also grew from 3.5% the group to 11.3% in FY twenty twenty five, reinforcing our strategy to build out IP investment and development for the future.

While the segment revenues for media and other decreased by 10% year on year, gross profit in this segment still managed to grow around 6 percent year on year from 1.5 to 1,600,000.0 in FY 02/05. In summary, I’m pleased to report that our record growth in FY 02/05 validates the group’s growth strategy and the disciplined execution of our integrated business model, giving us the foundation required for sustainable financial health. With that, I now turn the call back to Sebastian.

Sebastian Tocque, Group CEO, GCL Global Holdings: Thank you, Kenny. So at this point of time, I wanna take a quick moment in sharing what we feel would be GCL’s future. So looking into the future, we expect our upcoming acquisition and subsequent integration of Bandleong to broaden our business model in a very meaningful way. By incorporating Bunliong’s presence in gaming hardware and consumer electronics along with its distribution rights to some of the biggest gaming hardware and consumer electronic brands, we believe we will benefit from its relatively stable revenue trajectory, helping to offset the natural highs and lows of content driven IP cycles. We believe this portfolio will provide a solid foundation for reliable hardware focused income, giving us greater visibility to our consolidated financials moving forward.

Furthermore, in an era where gaming software has driven the demand for gaming hardware, the acquisition of Banleong as a consumer electronic and gaming hardware group will complete GCL’s ecosystem. We believe Banleong has also benefited from evolving consumer needs in recent years, with Panleong strategically positioned to capture the increasing demand in gaming graphic cards. Not only that, gaming cards aside, Wi Fi routers, gaming PC, and laptops with everything in between that serves the larger gaming community, Banleong has been positioned strategically. Based on public filings of Banleong’s unaudited financials prepared in accordance with Singapore Financial Report Standards, BanLong’s revenue was SGD193.6 million. Gross profit was SGD16.9 million and total comprehensive income was SGD4.8 million for the twelve months ended 03/31/2025.

We currently expect the acquisition to close by the August and any financial impact of that will only be seen in the current financial year of FY 2026. Subsequent to the acquisition of Ban Liao, we plan to streamline the group’s business into two main pillars, where the first pillar will focus on the relatively stable distribution business, which now includes gaming software, gaming hardware and consumer electronics. The second pillar will focus on game IP anchored by game development, game publishing, content creation and transmedia aspirations. Therefore, the overall group strategy will still revolve around capturing strong and interesting game IP, given that we believe we are well positioned to allow for IP adaptations across various mediums for potential further monetization. Like in the example of Stalker two, which was a game that we published last year, the anticipation of Stalker two led to a film adaptation last October, which became a catalyst for the game launch of Stalker two a month later.

The trend of transmedia as well has been prevalent in the industry for many years now. Some of the examples includes some of the biggest gaming IPs such as Sonic, Mario, and all these biggest all these large gaming IPs have been adapted into movies or TV series, which usually drives a boost in the underlying game demand as well. Looking looking ahead, we are trying to further strengthen our IP led strategy. We have signed global publishing agreements with two promising development studios such as SOT Panda and Leap Studio during FY ’25. So we have a quick introduction to both studios.

Saltpanda is currently developing Salt Sage Awakening, a high fidelity action RPG rooted in martial arts fantasy. The game showcases exceptional combat design and world building, and we are actively working with the studio on its go to market and publishing road map. Tall Sage Awakening had a recent showing in Bilibili World in Shanghai where it received many promising feedback from gamers alongside numerous media articles that highlighted the potential of the gameplay and the game IP. Meanwhile, Leaf Studio is finalizing Realm of Ink, a visually stunning title that explores psychological themes through traditional ink brush aesthetics. It’s an innovative title that pushes artistic boundaries while offering white commercial appeal as well.

Therefore, as a whole, our publishing strategy is not just financial. We’re currently looking out for game studios and gaming IPs to invest, to co develop, to publish, to represent our commitment in building a long term portfolio of valuable IP so as to enable creative studios with the capital, the publishing reach and strategic support needed to scale globally. In summary, we expect our current financial year of FY 2026 to be driven by several concurrent growth drivers such as demand for Switch two games that we’re currently selling, fueled by the heightened launch interest in an expanding library of enhanced titles, combined with the stabilizing impact of the Banlion acquisition and integration along with a broadened distribution reach. Additionally, we believe our growing development pipeline and Transmedia strategy will unlock new upside with IP returns potentially amplified through film, episodic content and other cross platform extensions. Therefore, as a summary, we plan to continue to invest selectively in IP development both within and outside of the GCL truth.

With that, I’ll now hand back the floor to the operator for any Q and A. So please feel free to engage, and feel free to to question and to engage with us on any of our strategies for this year and beyond.

Conference Operator: Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press 2. If you are on a speaker phone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. We will just pause for a moment to allow questioners to enter the queue.

Once again, that’s star one on your telephone, and wait for your name to be announced. We will call for questions again. That’s star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. We’ll just give it about ten seconds before we hand back. So that’s just star one on your phone.

Your first question comes from Scott Buck with H. C. Wainwright.

Scott Buck, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Hi, good morning guys. How’s everybody doing?

Sebastian Tocque, Group CEO, GCL Global Holdings: Hey, Scott. Good. How are you?

Scott Buck, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Good. I just have a couple of quick ones for you. One on, I guess, more of a modeling question. On operating expense, outside of the acquisition, should we expect any kind of meaningful uptick in fiscal year twenty six, from ’25? Are there are there places where you need to materially reinvest in the business, I guess?

Kenny Lin, Group Chief Financial Officer, GCL Global Holdings: So for I think in operating expense in in the two fiscal year 02/04 and 02/05, we have incurred significant listing fees. So in 02/06, you will see that. And, also, we are trying to optimize our cost and efficiency. So 02/06, you see a better margin, not only from the GP side, but also at the net income. Does that answer your question?

Scott Buck, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Yeah. No. That that’s helpful. And then, on on gross profit or or gross margin, as the business kind of branches out here, what is kind of a long term expectation for what’s, you know, possible on the gross margin side?

Kenny Lin, Group Chief Financial Officer, GCL Global Holdings: I guess, in general, we’re looking to increase our profitability and and margins as we move on to more publishing content and segment. But I can’t give any specific guidance or target nor forecast in that area.

Sebastian Tocque, Group CEO, GCL Global Holdings: I think, Scott, just kinda just kinda adding on to what Kenny has shared. With the acquisition of Bunleong, it it truly represents a strategic acquisition where a lot of the business, pillars have actually gone an overlay within both groups as well. So with the acquisition and a lot of the growth drivers that we’re seeking to develop post acquisition, it should lead to a lot of efficiencies and value drivers that hopefully will improve on the stand alone margins through the operational efficiencies that’s derived within the group post acquisition.

Scott Buck, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Great. That’s very helpful. And if I can squeeze in one last one. You touched on it a bit in the prepared remarks, but what what is the acquisition criteria? What what are you guys looking for in in future transactions?

Sebastian Tocque, Group CEO, GCL Global Holdings: I think for yeah. That that’s a great question, actually. I I think for future acquisitions, the group having acquired Bunliang really, you know, as a group profile, you see us evolve into very dynamic group. So from before, free Bunleong, we were just focused on gaming IP, game publishing opportunities. But post acquisition, we’re truly a dynamic group.

So at this point of time, I think, you know, we don’t have a hard and fast rule as to what kind of acquisitions would make sense. But what I can say is post acquisition as a more robust group, it certainly opens up more opportunities for us to look at any of the businesses that comes along our way that could add value either on the content creation side of things or the hardware business side of things. So as a group, I think we’ve been very aggressive in growing our our business through the acquisition, and you can see this in our growth numbers as well. But moving forward as a more robust full spectrum gaming company, I think we are always on the lookout for businesses that would make sense either on the IP software side of things or the hardware side of things as well.

Scott Buck, Analyst, H.C. Wainwright: Great. Well, I appreciate the added color, guys. Thank you very much.

Sebastian Tocque, Group CEO, GCL Global Holdings: Thank you. Thank you, Scott.

Conference Operator: We are showing no further questions. I’ll hand back to Sebastian for closing remarks.

Sebastian Tocque, Group CEO, GCL Global Holdings: Okay. So again, thank you, guys. I would really like to express my sincere gratitude to our shareholders, our partners, the interested parties that have dialed in. I invite your continued engagement, questions, collaboration as well. So if you have any follow-up questions that you weren’t able to ask on this call, please feel free to reach out to our Investor Relations team.

With this, I bid you farewell and have a great day ahead. Thank you, guys.

Crocker Colson, Investor Relations, GCL Global Holdings: Thank you.

Conference Operator: That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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