Earnings call transcript: PENN Entertainment reports Q3 2025 loss, stock rises pre-market

Penn Entertainment Inc. reported a larger-than-expected loss for the third quarter of 2025, with earnings per share (EPS) at -$0.22, missing the forecast of -$0.05. Revenue also fell short of expectations, coming in at 1.4 billion USD compared to the anticipated 1.73 billion USD. Despite these results, the company’s stock rose 9.48% in pre-market trading, reaching $17.90.

Key Takeaways

• Penn Entertainment missed both EPS and revenue forecasts for Q3 2025.
• The company is terminating its ESPN Bet partnership, shifting focus to theScore Bet.
• Stock rose 9.48% in pre-market trading despite earnings miss.
• iCasino achieved its highest quarterly gaming revenue to date.
• New share repurchase authorization of $750 million announced.

Company Performance

Penn Entertainment faced challenges this quarter, with both EPS and revenue falling short of expectations. The retail segment generated 1.4 billion USD in revenue, while the interactive segment reported 297.7 million USD. The company is focusing on product innovation and customer retention, particularly in its iCasino platform, which saw a 79% increase in monthly active users.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 1.4 billion USD, below the forecast of 1.73 billion USD.
• Earnings per share: -$0.22, missing the forecast of -$0.05.
• Total liquidity: 1.1 billion USD, including 660 million USD in cash.
• Share repurchases: 354 million USD in 2025, totaling 1.1 billion USD since 2022.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Penn Entertainment’s actual EPS of -$0.22 was significantly below the forecast of -$0.05, resulting in a surprise of -340%. Revenue also missed expectations by 19.08%, marking a challenging quarter for the company.

Market Reaction

Despite the earnings miss, Penn Entertainment’s stock rose 9.48% in pre-market trading to $17.90. This movement contrasts with the previous day’s close of $16.35, reflecting a positive investor sentiment likely driven by strategic shifts and future growth prospects.

Outlook & Guidance

The company is targeting break-even or better performance in its interactive segment by 2026. A new share repurchase program of $750 million has been authorized, and Penn Entertainment aims to reduce leverage below 5x over the coming years. The company is also exploring potential market expansion opportunities.

Executive Commentary

CEO Jay Snowden highlighted the strategic shift away from the ESPN Bet partnership, stating, "Our digital realignment will free up resources to strategically invest in North American markets." He also pointed to the emerging threat of prediction markets, noting, "Prediction markets are a major threat to the industry."

Risks and Challenges

• Competitive pressure in the online sports betting market.
• Potential regulatory changes impacting the industry.
• Margin pressures in the retail segment.
• The threat of emerging prediction markets.
• Economic conditions affecting consumer spending.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts questioned the termination of the ESPN Bet partnership and its implications for customer retention. There were also inquiries about margin pressures in the retail segment and Penn Entertainment’s international market expansion plans.

Full transcript - PENN Entertainment Inc (PENN) Q3 2025:

Rachel, Conference Moderator: Greetings and welcome to the Penn Entertainment third quarter 2025 earnings call. I would now like to turn the conference over to Joe Giaffoni, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Joe Giaffoni, Investor Relations, Penn Entertainment: Thank you, Rachel. Good morning and thank you for joining Penn Entertainment’s 2025 third quarter conference call. We’ll get to management’s presentation and comments momentarily, as well as your questions and answers. During the Q&A session, we ask that everyone please limit themselves to one question and one follow-up. Now I’ll review the safe harbor disclosure. Please note that today’s discussion contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve risks, assumptions, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. For more information, please see our press release for details on specific risk factors. It’s now my pleasure to turn the call over to the company’s CEO, Jay Snowden. Jay, please go ahead.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Thanks, Joe. Good morning to everyone. I’m joined here in YMSC by Felicia Hendrix, Todd George, Aaron LaBerge, and other members of our senior management team. Earlier this morning, we issued a joint announcement with ESPN regarding our mutual and amicable decision for an early termination of our exclusive online sports betting marketing agreement on December 1. I want to start off by saying that we are grateful for the exhaustive and collaborative efforts by our friends at ESPN and the Penn Interactive team to compete for a podium position in the highly competitive OSB space. Although we made significant progress in improving our product offering and building a cohesive ecosystem with ESPN, we were unable to establish ESPN Bet as a scale player.

It is the right time to realign our interactive focus, prioritizing our digital assets in Canada and our Hollywood iCasino product to further leverage our core retail casino business and overall omnichannel business model. This shift emphasizes cross-sell opportunities across our ecosystem and enhances connectivity with our 33 million-plus PennPlay customer database. Going forward, as of December 1, pending final regulatory approvals, our U.S. and Canadian OSB brands will be theScore Bet, which, as you know, has been delivering strong results for years in Ontario, one of North America’s largest and most competitive online markets. Aaron LaBerge and his best-in-class team are currently working on a seamless customer experience that includes the current app being automatically updated to theScore Bet when you open it on the date of transition. All account information, balances, betting history, pending bets, marketing offers, and promotions transfer over automatically.

There will be no new app to download or new registration process to go through. Our digital realignment will free up resources to strategically invest in the North American markets and customer cohorts with the strongest return potential, which we expect will drive enhanced unit economics and profitability. We will also continue to build our digital database in states with a Penn retail property in order to leverage cross-sell opportunities and prepare for the potential legalization of iCasino in those markets down the road. Lastly, the transition to theScore Bet will present an opportunity to optimize our digital business and operate more efficiently, including replacing fixed media spends with performance-based and regionally targeted marketing that complement our retail and iCasino footprint. Digital engagement with current and potential new customers is essential to our company’s long-term success.

64% of our total company player database growth since 2019 has come from our digital channels. This has allowed us to attract a much younger customer demographic and to create significant and unique cross-sell opportunities and experiences for them. Our data shows that customers who play with us across multiple channels are significantly more valuable than single-channel customers and have much higher retention, which is critical as the industry continues to evolve rapidly. Our North America iCasino business achieved its highest quarterly gaming revenue to date and improvement of nearly 40% year over year, driven by record cross-sell from OSB of 62% and strong growth from our standalone Hollywood and theScore Bet iCasino apps in the third quarter.

Going forward, OSB will remain a strong top-of-funnel customer acquisition driver for Hollywood iCasino, which will continue to be embedded into our OSB offering in states where it is legal, and Hollywood iCasino will also continue to operate as a standalone app. As highlighted on slide eight of our investor presentation, the introduction of our standalone app, along with improved cross-sell from online sports betting, has led to a 79% increase in iCasino MAUs during the third quarter. It is worth noting that, as encouraging as our iCasino results were in Q3, we set new all-time monthly records for MAUs, GGR, and NGR again in October. The momentum is continuing to build in this exciting growth channel.

As you’ll see on slide 11, over the last year, we have significantly improved the velocity of our product innovation in order to drive results in key areas of our interactive business, with a particular focus and significant year-over-year improvement in the area of customer retention. Let me wrap up our digital update by sharing that our interactive financial goals for 2026 of being break-even or better have not changed. We will have complete control over our digital cost structure and marketing budget for 2026, which will primarily focus on the highest margin markets and customer cohorts. We will provide a more detailed earnings guide on our Q4 earnings call in February.

Shifting to our core regional casino business, as you’ll see on slide 12, our talented teams across the country executed very well, and demand was stable across gaming and non-gaming amenities during the quarter, particularly at our properties not impacted by new supply and increased competitor promotional activity in those same markets. We saw particularly strong results in our West segment at our properties across Ohio, as well as in St. Louis and Illinois. Similar to Q2, we also saw increases in theoretical revenue across all of our rated worth segments of our retail database, along with overall growth in both total visitation and spend per visit in the aggregate across the portfolio.

The fourth quarter is off to a solid start, and we are encouraged by early trends at our new Hollywood Casino in Joliet, which is driving both impressive volumes and database growth through its best-in-market offering, consistent with our long track record of delivering solid returns on our regional gaming investments across the country. We are also pleased to share that revenue from Joliet so far has been almost entirely incremental to our Hollywood Aurora property. We have seen a 42% increase in our active database at Joliet since opening, and more than 50% of that growth, excuse me, was from previously inactive customers, showing the benefits of the much-improved product and location. Our new offering has also been highly efficient at activating digitally native customers in Illinois.

While our other previously disclosed development projects remain on track, in Henderson, Nevada, the second hotel tower at M Resort is scheduled to open on December 1. Our Hollywood Columbus hotel tower and new Hollywood Aurora casino relocation are scheduled to open in late Q2 of 2026, subject to final regulatory approvals, and the relocation of Hollywood Council Bluffs is anticipated to open in late 2027 or early 2028. With that, I’ll now turn it over to Felicia.

Rachel, Conference Moderator: Thanks, Jay. As highlighted on slide 4 in the investor presentation, under the terms of our early termination agreement, cash payments to ESPN will cease at the end of the fourth quarter of 2025. Starting in 2026, we will no longer have any marketing obligations with ESPN. Pursuant to the termination agreement, a total of $38.1 million will be paid to ESPN in the fourth quarter of 2025 for the marketing services we will incur through December 1. From December 1 to December 31, we will pay a total of $5 million to ESPN for traditional media to support theScore Bet and/or Hollywood iCasino offerings. Regarding the warrants, all unvested warrants and performance warrants will be forfeited by ESPN. ESPN will retain roughly $8 million of vested warrants with a weighted strike price of approximately $29.

As a reminder, these warrants are subject to net settlement in stock or cash at our option. At an assumed exercise price of $29, the vested warrants would represent potential dilution of roughly 320,000 shares, which, when compared to our 138 million shares outstanding, is 0.2% dilution. Really, no material dilutive impact from the example I just provided due to the net settlement. The non-cash expense related to the vested warrants in the fourth quarter will be roughly $14 million. Our retail segment generated revenues of $1.4 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $465.8 million, and segment-adjusted EBITDA margins of 32.8%. Earlier, Jay touched on our stable core demand in our retail segment, particularly at our properties not impacted by new supply and increased competitor promotional activity. We have a lot to look forward to in the fourth quarter for our retail segment.

The quarter is off to a nice start through the first weekend of November. Hollywood Casino Joliet trends are encouraging. We are also excited about the December 1 opening of the second hotel tower at M Resort. For our retail segment, we expect fourth quarter 2025 revenues to range from $1.41 billion-$1.43 billion and adjusted EBITDA to range from $455 million-$475 million. Our interactive segment generated revenues of $297.7 million, including a tax gross up of $139.5 million and adjusted EBITDA loss of $76.6 million. Gaming revenues and adjusted EBITDA in the quarter came in below expectations due to customer-friendly holds across our digital operations and lower than anticipated OSB volumes. Given our brand transition and our targeted retention campaign, our fourth quarter 2025 interactive segment-adjusted EBITDA results will look different than the guidance we provided earlier this year.

We will incur a loss in the fourth quarter, but to provide guidance with a high degree of precision today is challenging given the unknowns around retention following the rebranding on December 1. In addition to well-known customer-friendly sports outcomes in October, the quarter will also be impacted by a number of one-time expenses that will not recur in 2026 as we exit the relationship, make changes to our current cost structure, and focus on rebranding and retention efforts. Based on what we know today, we expect the fourth quarter loss to be smaller than that of the third quarter. Importantly, our cash payments and non-cash warrant expense to ESPN will cease at the end of the fourth quarter this year, which provides us with significantly more marketing and financial flexibility and a clean runway as we head into 2026.

Corporate expense of $34 million included $3.9 million of legal and advisory costs related to activist activity in connection with our 2025 annual meeting of shareholders. We continue to expect other segment-adjusted EBITDA, which includes corporate expense, to be negative $121 million for the year before any further legal and advisory costs. The table on page 10 of our earnings release summarizes our cash expenditures in the quarter, including cash payments to our landlords, cash taxes, cash interest on traditional debt, and total CapEx. Of our total $172.7 million CapEx in the quarter, $122 million was project CapEx, primarily related to our four development projects. We entered the third quarter of 2025 with total liquidity of $1.1 billion, inclusive of $660 million in cash and cash equivalents. In the third quarter, we repurchased $154.1 million of shares at an average price of $19.34 per share.

Since September 30th, we have repurchased an incremental $85 million of shares at an average price of $17.44 per share, which takes us to a total of $354 million of shares repurchased as of November 5th at an average share price of $17.64 per share, in connection with our previously stated goal to repurchase at least $350 million of shares this year. Since the beginning of 2022, we have repurchased $1.1 billion of shares, or 25% of our shares outstanding. We have $395 million remaining under our current share repurchase authorization, which expires at the end of this year. To that end, this morning, we announced that our board of directors has authorized a new three-year $750 million share repurchase authorization, which commences on January 1st, 2026.

As we have demonstrated over the past several years, we consider share repurchases a major component of our capital allocation strategy, which also includes delevering and investing in growth capital. Looking forward, we plan to continue to be opportunistic with our share repurchase activity. We expect to continue to delever, especially as the large losses in interactive are behind us, and we continue to evaluate our pipeline of future growth projects. Transitioning to our retail growth projects, on November 3, we received $150 million in funding from GLPI at a 7.79% cap rate in connection with the $206 million second hotel tower construction at the M Resort in Las Vegas. This follows the $130 million in funding from GLPI we received in early August related to the $185 million Joliet project.

For the $360 million Aurora project that opens in late Q2 2026, we have already committed to take $225 million of funding from GLPI at a cap rate of 7.75%. We will draw from GLPI close to the opening of Aurora, and we have not yet announced our funding plans for the $100 million hotel tower at Columbus. We expect total cash payments under our triple-net leases to be $246 million for the fourth quarter, reflecting a full 2% escalator on the amended and restated Penn Master Lease and a 1.5% fixed escalator on the 2023 Master Lease, both effective November 1. As we head into the final months of the year, we are updating our 2025 CapEx forecast to reflect the shift of some project costs into next year. We now expect project CapEx of $430 million, which compares to prior guidance of $490 million.

Our total 2025 CapEx is now $685 million compared to our prior guidance of $730 million, which reflects this shift, slightly offset by a pull forward of some maintenance CapEx into 2025 from 2026. For 2025 net cash interest expense, we project $160 million. For cash taxes, we do not expect to be a cash taxpayer in 2025, and our basic share count at the end of the third quarter was 138 million shares. After the June 20th repurchase of the convertible notes, we now have 4.5 million potential dilutive shares from the remaining convertible notes stub and about 1 million dilutive shares from RSUs and stock options. I will now turn it back to Jay.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: All right. Thanks, Felicia. I’d like to conclude by reiterating my sincere thank you to ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro and his entire team at ESPN, who have been great partners throughout our time together. There is a lot we will take away from this partnership, including 2.9 million new users into our ecosystem, a vastly improved product and feature set, and a best-in-class digital team led by Aaron LaBerge, who will continue to oversee our interactive businesses and our transition to theScore Bet. As I mentioned, we’re looking forward to the launch of a unified online sports betting brand across all of North America, which will provide a path to stronger unit economics with a simplified cost structure.

Our reduced fixed media spends will now provide us much more marketing flexibility to invest more in Canada, as well as in U.S. iCasino and OSB markets and customer cohorts with more compelling returns, particularly as we look ahead to new market openings like Alberta, which is anticipated later in 2026. Importantly, we are in full control of our entire business moving forward. We own our brands, we own our database, we own our tech stack, and we have extremely talented teams. This will enable us to better manage and forecast our digital business with greater precision, much like we have done in our regional gaming portfolio for many, many years. Penn’s unique omnichannel strategy going forward is clear, compelling, and growth-focused.

We have a high-quality and extremely well-maintained portfolio of land-based properties across the country that generate the highest tax-adjusted margins in the industry, along with significant free cash flow, and we have several growth catalysts over the coming quarters, coupled with fewer headwinds than we have seen in many years. Our digital business is complementary to the land-based segment. It is primarily focused on our Canadian operations and iCasino-first markets in the U.S. We will continue to use OSB across the U.S. to drive top-of-funnel database acquisition and cross-sell to Penn’s retail and digital casino assets, but at a cost structure focused on overall profitability for the digital segment. The team and I are focused and excited to execute on this strategy to create compelling value for our shareholders over the short, medium, and long term. With that, let’s go ahead and open the line for questions.

Rachel, Conference Moderator: At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and one on your telephone keypad. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star and two. We’ll take our first question from Barry Jonas with Truist Securities. Your line is open.

Todd George, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Hey, guys. With the ESPN exit, can you talk a bit more about any puts and takes for near-term as well as maybe longer-term profitability for interactive, and then maybe throw in omnichannel’s contribution to retail in that as well? Thank you.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Thanks, Barry. Good morning. Yeah, let’s take a step back for a second. As you think about the investments that we’ve made in our digital business over the last, call it, five years, we really had four primary goals. As we made those investments, we knew that getting into the digital business, particularly sports betting, was going to be a great top-of-funnel driver for the company, and we would be able to feed the database with a younger set of customers that just weren’t visiting our retail casinos. The average age of our retail database was getting older, and we knew this was an opportunity for us to really bring the average age of our database down. We’ve been successful in doing that.

You see in one of our slides there, and we’ve talked about it before, the average age of our active database is younger by seven years from 2019 to where we are now in 2025. That was goal one. I think we’ve done a great job with that. We’re still working at it, of course. Number two is once you have those younger customers and new customers in your database, you want to be able to cross-sell them to your profitable land-based casino businesses. We’ve shared with you before, we’ve been successful in doing that. That is going to continue. It is a very important goal for us, the cultivation of those relationships and to provide great experiences and ultimately provide monetization opportunities for the company with those new customers. Check that box. I think we’ve been effective at doing that.

Again, more work in front of us. I think number three for us was we wanted to make sure that we were preparing for the future and making sure that Penn, as a company, is set for where the industry is headed. I’m sure we’ll talk about plenty on this call. There’s a lot going on in this industry right now. I feel like we’re really under attack from a number of different directions, but I think the company today is positioned extremely well to compete, regardless of which direction we end up going as an industry. What we want to do and accomplish digitally, what we want to do and accomplish in our retail footprint, and of course, it all comes together with the omnichannel strategy that we mentioned earlier. I would say check the box. We’ve built this company. We’re prepared for the future.

Really important goal. And then lastly, of course, we’ve made these digital investments to make money, to deliver a return for our shareholders. We have not done that yet. That’s the focus in 2026 and moving forward is to start to deliver profitability for our shareholders, which will only grow over time. I think at a high level, that’s the way we’ve been thinking about it. It’s nice to be able to turn the corner and speak to profitability, and we’ll have more to speak to on that specifically for 2026 and beyond when we get on our call in February with all of you.

Todd George, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Great. I might ask a follow-up on retail. You sort of cited increased competition and promotional activity. Curious how that’s been impacting your operations beyond initial expectations and maybe how you’re responding. Thank you.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Todd, you want to grab that one?

Todd George, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Sure.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Thanks, Joe. Listen, I think there’s been plenty of discussion around some of our competitors in the space and how they’ve responded. I think we’re seeing kind of the double edge here. It’s really about the new competition in key markets. I think slide 12 in the earnings deck shows a lot of the way we look at the business and what we’re seeing. Markets not impacted by new competition performing really well. In the markets where we have new competition, there’s also been a competitive response that has increased promotional reinvestment. What that usually does is it can lead to increased marketing costs. Anytime you have a new competitor coming in, you’ll have a little bit of a spike in labor costs. You’ll see some retention bonuses for some key positions, but you’ll also see salary and wage growth.

The good news is fairly temporary, some one-time expenses, and then things normalize over time. If you look at slide 12, it shows a good snapshot of the way we performed around the country.

I would just add too, and this speaks to the job that Todd and our regional heads and our general managers in the company, we have never stopped investing in our properties. We deliver best-in-market offerings and experiences in almost every one of our markets. Todd and I both have been at this for too long to even say these days, but these things happen. You get promotions that kind of ramp up and ramp back down. The reality is, in these mature markets, customers may chase a promotion once or twice. They end up settling back to where they feel comfortable, where there’s a really good value proposition. We like how we stack up against everybody in the regional gaming space in terms of overall asset quality, customer service delivery, and experience. We’ll be fine.

This will be a little noise for a short period of time. It’ll calm down, and on we go.

Todd George, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Great. Thank you.

Rachel, Conference Moderator: Our next question comes from Brandt Montour with Barclays. Your line is open.

Barry Jonas, Analyst, Truist Securities: Hello, everybody. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one on digital, I know that we’ll be waiting or we’re going to wait to hear more about your plans on profitability. I know that there’s multiple moving pieces of profitability, including retention risk on the revenue side. If you could just, Jay, focus on the cost side and talk about the fixed cost removal for ESPN, $150 million a year. You said the word replace that with the marketing you’re going to need to support theScore. Is it fair to assume that sort of just looking at those two pieces, that marketing and theScore should, by definition, come in below what you are paying to ESPN?

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Significantly below, I would say, Brandt. I mean, as you think about the marketing dollars we’ve been spending with ESPN, most of those dollars will take down to the bottom line. Some of those dollars will be redeployed to the markets and the customer cohorts that we talked about, the ones that will deliver us the highest returns, primarily our business in Canada. We’ve been competing really well there with not a lot of marketing spend, and that’s going to change. We’re going to be able to spend more money in Canada and continue to grow our share, I think, profitably there. In the iCasino hybrid states in the U.S., those are going to be the primary markets of focus, obviously highest value customers. That’s the way that we think about it.

Again, we’ll have more detail for you, but you should expect to see, as we talk about 2026. We’re going to learn a lot the next two and a half months before we get on a call with you again, sort of post-rebrands. We understand what retention looks like. I think we have a very good plan around retention. We’ve been working on this plan for a couple of months now. And so, we’re going to know a lot more in February. We’re going to continue to adjust our cost structure and our marketing spend assumptions based on what we’re seeing around retention and revenue projections as we go into 2026. Long-winded way of saying, we have full control over all of those variables. Stay tuned. We’ll have more to share in February.

The goal is to stop, to move away from losses in digital. And turn that around and really start generating significantly more free cash flow as a company.

Todd George, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Great. Thank you for that. Just a quick one on the retail side. On the back of Barry’s question, I’m assuming the guide down to EBITDA at retail was mostly that competition you cited. Could you just maybe bifurcate between competition that you had been seeing in supply-impacted markets, like the reaction that I think you were talking about from other competitors in those markets, between that and potentially any increased promotional environment or promotional activity in markets that are not supply-impacted? I think you know who I’m talking about. If you could just sort of bifurcate those and let us know if the second one has become a bigger headwind as of late.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Yeah. Hey, Brandt, this is Todd. Look. The reality is the group you’re talking about also happens to be in every market where new competition is coming in. That’s kind of that double impact that we saw in the other markets. For the most part, those are healthy markets where we have really good properties, where we’re typically market leader vying for number one consistently. A little bit less there. Obviously, there you don’t have the labor impact. It really is kind of confined to that marketing promotional environment, which, as Jay mentioned, we take a bit of a different approach where reinvesting in our properties, creating that experience, people will gravitate back towards that experience versus what offer is in my hand, what coupon is in my hand.

Todd George, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Great. Thanks, everybody.

Rachel, Conference Moderator: Our next question comes from Joe Stauff with Susquehanna. Your line is open.

Joe Stauff, Analyst, Susquehanna: Thank you. Good morning. I wanted to ask just a couple of questions to refamiliarize myself with theScore Bet. And wondering, I guess, maybe the updated share that you have in Ontario, I assume, obviously, you’ll launch in Alberta. And wondering, for the U.S. customer database within theScore, is there a concentration of adjacent markets in and around Ontario, or is it a wider distribution? Just wondering how to think about that.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Yeah. Happy to, Joe. Aaron, anything I missed, feel free to jump in here. Here’s the way to think about theScore app and our offering, is that we have roughly 4 million monthly active users across North America. That’s been wildly consistent, even though we haven’t paid as much attention to that business as we should be and will be going forward. It has stayed remarkably consistent, really, since the time of acquisition of theScore. Of that 4 million, roughly two-thirds of those are in the U.S., and one-third of those are in Canada. The popularity of theScore and theScore Media and theScore brand is really spread across Canada. You do not see it as just overly concentrated in Ontario.

All provinces across Canada, there’s about the same level of popularity and market share from a digital sports media perspective, which is why we are very encouraged about the opportunity in Alberta. As you think about the U.S. and the two-thirds of that 4 million, or call it 2.6 million monthly active users, roughly two-thirds of those users are in states currently that are online sports betting legal states. Having that brand connection, we think, will be helpful. It has been in Canada from theScore Media to theScore Bet from a sports betting perspective. We’ll be able to do essentially the same, we’ll be able to deploy the same playbook here in the U.S. from a sports betting perspective. That has been effective for us there. We’ll see what that gets us, but we do think that that could be helpful.

Look, Aaron and team have done a great job improving the product and the experience, our feature set, the UI/UX. If you look at our retention results this year at the first two months of football season versus last year, significant improvement. We are going to be laser-focused on retention of existing users and then also getting some of these ScoreMedia users that maybe currently are not using ESPN Bet to use theScore Bet in the U.S. as we move forward.

Todd George, Executive, Penn Entertainment: That’s great.

Joe Stauff, Analyst, Susquehanna: Got it. Thank you for that. Maybe two quick kind of clarifications. I guess one, just based on your commentary and based on my understanding historically, is you own all the customer data associated with ESPN Bet. The second clarifying question is, I did not see an expiration on the $8 million warrants that ESPN will own going forward?

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: I’ll tackle the first one, and we’ll get an answer for you on the second one in a moment. You are correct that the customer data of the 2.9 million users that I referenced earlier that we’ve been able to build in our database since the beginning of our relationship with ESPN Bet, we own. That customer dataset. That’s exactly correct. For regulatory reasons, we’re the only natural owner of that customer dataset. ESPN, because they’re not licensed and they’re not regulated, they can’t have access to it. That’s just the way the deal goes. I’m not sort of pointing out anything other than the way that it has to work from a regulatory perspective. Customer data stays with Penn. That’s something that obviously we’re going to continue to work on, is reactivation and the things that we have in this football season.

We’ve been fortunate to see some good results there. That’ll continue with regard to the warrant expiration.

Penn Entertainment: Yeah. Joe, those were part of the 10-year deal. So at the end of 10 years, they expire.

Joe Stauff, Analyst, Susquehanna: Gotcha. All right. Thank you.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Thanks, Joe.

Rachel, Conference Moderator: Our next question comes from Jordan Bender with Citizens JMP Securities. Your line is open.

Jordan Bender, Analyst, Citizens JMP Securities: Hey, everyone. Thanks for the question. This is kind of the first time that you’ve run a unified online strategy across both Canada and the U.S. kind of since you started your digital operations here. As you start to dig into databases and expand digitally that way, did it start to make sense to look at potentially buying retail properties up in Canada to cross-sell and further dig into that customer database? Thank you.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Yeah. Thanks for the question, Jordan. I would say that’s something that’s sort of been on our radar before. I would say it would remain on our radar. I wouldn’t necessarily think about it as moving up significantly in the list of priorities, but there’s not a lot of options there. There’s sort of two large operators in Canada from a retail perspective. If the opportunities presented themselves at the right time and the right price, we would definitely take a hard look at that. To your point, there would be synergies from an omnichannel perspective similar to what we’ve seen in the U.S. I would say it’s not really ratcheting up on the priority list, but we would be opportunistic if the opportunity presented itself.

Jordan Bender, Analyst, Citizens JMP Securities: Appreciate it. Thank you. Felicia, just kind of following up on your comments around capital allocation and the balance sheet, you’ve loosely kind of guided us or talked us to leverage targets or kind of how you want to run the business over the years. I mean, as we move kind of into theScore and cleaning up some of the online losses, is there kind of a level or a leverage target that you would roughly want to run the business kind of as we look out in the 2026, 2027, 2028?

Penn Entertainment: Yeah. Thank you for that. Yeah. I would say over the longer term, our optimal lease suggested leverage level is probably somewhat below five times. We are going to remain focused on getting to that level over the next several years. Just keep in mind that the leveraging trajectory, which we are obviously very focused on, just may not be perfectly linear because we are going to continue to be nimble as opportunities present themselves, right? We will continue to be opportunistic, buying back stock, and we are going to continue to invest in our own growth opportunities as we look at our pipeline, right? Again, focused on delivering, getting below five times, but that may not be perfectly linear.

Todd George, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Yeah. I would just add that we do have, and we’re obviously encouraged, it’s early, but we’re encouraged by the results of our Joliet water-to-land project. We have announced a few others that you’re all aware of. We have others we’re looking at right now within the company’s portfolio that we think can also deliver really nice returns. It’s about balancing. I mean, Felicia said it very well. It’s about balancing all three of those. They’re all three priorities, and we think we can effectively balance them as we move forward.

Jordan Bender, Analyst, Citizens JMP Securities: Thank you very much.

Rachel, Conference Moderator: Our next question comes from John G. DeCree with CBRE. Your line is open.

Todd George, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. I know we talked a little bit about the kind of users acquired with ESPN, Jay, but wondering if you have any initial thoughts, and I realize this might be a tough question, about customer retention in the digital channel when you rebrand to theScore. You obviously have some experience with that when Barstool went to ESPN Bet. Are there any kind of strategies or expectations you have about kind of retaining those customers and getting them to kind of stay with theScore when the rebrand occurs?

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Yeah. It’s a great question. I would say that it’s kind of apples and oranges when you think about what we did at the time of that brand change versus where we are now. We put our customers through a lot of hoops to jump, and we had a new technology stack. We were down for several days. We asked them to come back in and re-register and redeposit. There was a lot going on that created noise in addition to the brand change. I think we feel like we’re well-positioned here. We deliver what is one of the best online sports betting and online casino experiences, not just as we see it, but as independent third parties that review and rate these apps and these experiences. We rate very high, both in iCasino and online sports betting. We’ve been moving up the rankings.

As a matter of fact, one just came out earlier this week. We moved up a couple more spots. We feel like from what we’re seeing on product quality and retention overall this football season compared to last year, we’re in a good spot. I don’t want to predict what retention and churn end up looking like over the coming months, but we feel like we’re positioned well. We deliver a great experience. Our users, we know that most of our users were their number one app, and we want to make sure that that stays the case. We have a full calendar planned out, as you can imagine. We have the ability to target and personalize from a marketing and CRM perspective today that we just didn’t have even a year ago.

We have got a full marketing plan, and we are going to be ready to go. If some do not respond initially, there are going to be bounce-back follow-up offers. We feel pretty good about the overall strategy. Aaron, anything you want to add?

Todd George, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Yeah. I would just say to underscore what Jay just said, it’s the same exact app this time. You don’t have to download a new app. You don’t have to re-register, as you said. You’ll show up. Your icon will change. Once you’re in the app, the user experience is exactly the same. The logo on the app will change, but it’s the same experience. As Jay said, our retention has been really, really good this year as a result of all the product enhancements we’ve been making. We feel really strong and confident that people will still have the same experience. We’ll communicate clearly that the brand has changed, but nothing else has. The people that love using the app are still going to have the same level of generosity and interaction with us, personalization that exists today.

We feel pretty good, but obviously, we’re going to be watching it closely as we rebrand.

Jordan Bender, Analyst, Citizens JMP Securities: That’s really helpful. I appreciate. That’s good commentary. Maybe a quick one for Felicia. If I missed it, I apologize, but I know you took the financing for M Resort from GLPI. I think Aurora, you’re expected to do that next year. Anything for Columbus at this point? Maybe it’s a little too early, but just figured I’d ask anyway.

Penn Entertainment: Yeah. That’s right. It’s too early. We’ll make that decision as we get closer to the opening of Columbus.

Jordan Bender, Analyst, Citizens JMP Securities: Great. Thanks, Felicia. Thanks, all.

Penn Entertainment: Sure thing.

Rachel, Conference Moderator: Our next question comes from Dan Politzer with JPMorgan Chase & Co. Your line is open.

Dan Politzer, Analyst, JPMorgan Chase & Co.: Hey. Good morning, everyone. I just wanted to follow up on 2026 and, Jay, your comments that you’ll still be great, even or better, and that hasn’t changed. I guess, directionally, we think about you’re going to be more operationally efficient. ESPN Bet and all the associated fees and marketing costs go away, but you guys are investing in theScore. I mean, directionally. Should the outlook be better today than it was, say, two or three months ago, or is it really just truly no difference at this point?

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: I think the target and goal for ’26, we feel, as we sit here today and until we better understand what retention looks like post-rebrand, it stays the same as it was earlier this year. Obviously, going into next year, it would have been more challenging for us to be break-even or better if we were not able to exit early because the fees were not changing, but the market share was not moving as fast as we needed it to and the levels of what we had forecasted to all of you on our last earnings call for football season. This sort of gives us that clear runway as we move into 2026. We feel like we have got a real good handle on all of the puts and takes, which is, for the team and I, it feels very good.

It’s no different than how we feel about our regional gaming business. I think we’ve been one of the best in the industry of forecasting what’s going to happen, with a level of precision that is as good as anyone. We want to get there on all aspects of our business. 2026 will be a step in that direction for digital as well.

Jordan Bender, Analyst, Citizens JMP Securities: Got it. Just to follow up, I do not know, to the extent that you could maybe just comment or opine, the kind of background, how you got to this point, was there a breaking point? Did prediction markets enter into your decision process at all? Just kind of any background you can discuss, and obviously, given you have a competitor that now kind of stepped into that deal.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Yeah. I would say the lines of communication, certainly between Jimmy and I and our teams, has been positive. It’s been open, and it continued to be since our last earnings call. We also know what that threshold level was of market share to be at by the third anniversary. We could see through the first couple of months of football season, though we’re making a lot of improvements in a number of areas that we’ve shared with you, we weren’t on a path, a trajectory to get to that level of market share. You know where it’s headed and why sort of string this along. Let’s get together and figure out the best path forward for both companies. I’ve been talking about this the last several quarters.

There is that three-year out, and both companies are going to have to do what’s in their best interests. I think that we figured out a path forward that was in both companies’ best interests and was done in a way that was, I think, professional. That’s the way the relationship was all the way through the first two years and change. I think very highly of Jimmy and the entire team at ESPN and wish them nothing but the best. We’ll still be very likely an advertising partner of theirs. There’s no hard feelings. We had aspirations. We had goals to be a podium player. Didn’t work out. We’re moving on from that, and they are too. I think that’s perfectly fine.

Jordan Bender, Analyst, Citizens JMP Securities: Got it. Thanks so much.

Rachel, Conference Moderator: Our next question comes from Shaun Kelley with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Shaun Kelley, Analyst, Bank of America: Hey. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for taking my question. Jay, I think there are two strategic questions I have. First. I think as we all think about the interactive business, historically, there’ve kind of been actually three or four parts, right? And I know an integrated strategy moving forward under theScore Bet moniker makes a lot of sense. But we kind of think about Canada and some success up there. We think about market access as sort of a fee-or-profit pool for this business. And then we think about iGaming, the Hollywood Casino brand, and probably contribution profit positive. And then, obviously, the OSB investments. My question is just very high level. As you thought about those different pieces, is there more to come here on the strategic side?

Or as you’ve kind of done the full rework here, are all those different pieces kind of set and this is the go-to-market for the next year, 18 months for Penn and you as a management team? Are there any other of those pieces that are in flux or you might be looking at as you just kind of think about the right fit for what Penn’s business is moving forward?

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Yeah. Look, I think strategically, what we’ve laid out today, we feel like we can execute against this. What’s the most important factor here is we have full control over all of the puts and takes. I think we’re a company that delivers when we have full control over what’s in front of us. That’ll be the case on the digital side moving forward. The four parts of the digital business you laid out, you’re right about that. I would say, however, that Canada has sort of been more of a standalone because you have one brand for both sports and iCasino up there. What we’re talking about today in this brand change doesn’t affect our Canadian operations at all. We’ve got nice momentum there. We had our all-time best iCasino month last month in Canada. We’ve got some nice momentum there.

We’re going to have, I believe we can build on that with more of a focus and more resources and marketing dollars headed up north of the border. Market access, I think. That’s a nice revenue and EBITDA stream. It’s not going to be as high as it is today forever, right? These deals will eventually expire over time. We want to make sure that we’re not just relying on that because it’s not there forever. We’re taking some of that money and we’re investing and building this company up for the future, as I mentioned earlier. We’ve done that. I think as it relates to U.S. iCasino and OSB, they’re so interconnected. You can’t really—I don’t think you can look at iCasino as its own opportunity because think about our iCasino business in the U.S.

Most of it today still comes from within the integrated sports betting app. You would have a hard time extracting all of those players onto your standalone Hollywood iCasino if they have been playing slot machines and playing blackjack through your sports betting app. Those two really are connected together. All of this has created a very large digital database for us that we do cross-sell into our land-based properties. Three-quarters of our land-based properties are in states where OSB is legal. Almost 40% of those digital native customers live within 50 mi of our properties. You visit our properties today, and you see it. You feel it. There is a younger customer. They are in the sports books, playing tables. They are in our restaurants, and they are playing slot machines, which is very encouraging. I understand the way you are thinking about that.

I would say strategically for us, it all pulls together, and it really sets the company up the way we need to be set up for where the industry is headed. Prediction markets, I think, is an interesting topic. My view on prediction markets is that this is a major threat to the industry. Taking a step back, we’re, of course, give you the canned expression everyone else does. We’re monitoring the situation. I think, importantly, we’re going to very clearly take our direction from our state regulators. We always have. We always will. That doesn’t change. With all of that said, I do think as an industry that we’ve got to play some offense here. When I say industry, I think it’s operators, it’s working with our regulators, working with our state legislators and lawmakers because the posture that we’re taking at this point is very defensive.

It’s going to take a long time to play out. It doesn’t feel at the moment like a winning hand. Prediction markets are live across the country. I think that as an industry, we feel like we can outperform those guys if we’re in the same market as they are with the same product, i.e., sports betting. We think our sports betting product is much better than prediction markets. I think that’s proving out. Where they are building a real business is in states where it’s not legal. It’s legal sort of at the commodities federal level, but it’s not at the state level. How does that play out in the courts? It’s going to take years. I don’t think that.

The winning hand for us is going to be to try to fight this out through the courts. It’s likely to be appealed over and over again, take a long time. Look, who loses out here? Customers do. There’s no responsible gaming protections. Know your customer. All of the customer protections and regulations that we deal with and have been for decades, those do not exist at the prediction market level. Again, I think there’s a lot more to do here. I think as an industry, we need to come together and figure out how to play offense. I would say stay tuned. I do not think us all sitting around and monitoring what’s happening is going to be— It is not going to be a viable strategy.

Shaun Kelley, Analyst, Bank of America: You kind of stole my second question. I’m not even sure I actually asked on prediction markets, but that was really definitely where I was going. Just the one very short follow-up, because I appreciate the depth of that answer, would just be: Have you looked at all into the possibilities of casino mechanics as it relates to either prediction markets or prediction market overlays? There was something that came up, at least on the sports betting side, a mechanic that Hard Rock just kind of went live with in Florida. I mean, how far down the rabbit hole are you going? Because, I mean, realistically, it feels like some of these things are actually possible. I know it seems crazy, but they are kind of possible. Have you kind of thought about that?

I know it’s really far off today, but the pace of innovation, I think, as you alluded to, is actually pretty incredible.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: I actually don’t think it’s that far off, Sean, at all. You mentioned what Hard Rock’s doing in Florida. Now you’re talking about past motor races and sports betting, but it’s spinning a slot machine. Historical horse racing has been done in the land-based businesses. I mean, let’s be very clear about this. I would be shocked if prediction market operators, as they’re raising money at significant valuations and seem to be doubling every few months, aren’t talking about this. If you can move forward with prediction markets and sports gambling, what would stop you from offering prediction markets and contracts on the next spin of a slot machine, the next hand of blackjack, the next spin of the ball for a roulette table? This is existential. This is not—we’re going to be talking about this, I think, in a matter of months, not years.

I think as an industry, we’ve got to play offense and figure out how do we stay ahead of this. We’ve got to come together quickly, though. We don’t have a lot of time here. I think there’s some natural opportunities and some natural solutions here. To your question, should we be looking at a prediction model launch along those lines? Maybe. I think there’s other paths that could be a lot more effective that would more level the playing field and allow us to do what we do best and offer great products and experiences that would be better than what they can offer. We do need to work with the other constituencies in the space.

Shaun Kelley, Analyst, Bank of America: Thank you.

Rachel, Conference Moderator: Our next question comes from Chad Beynon with Macquarie. Your line is open.

Chad Beynon, Analyst, Macquarie: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for all the commentary so far. With respect to iCasino, obviously, a lot of moving items announced today and in the past couple of months. Jay, what’s your appetite to look at non-North American markets, given that you have the tech, the staff, the improvements to maybe have kind of a leg up against some of the other companies that are in non-North American markets and aren’t fully integrated? It appears that they’re having a harder time. Yeah. What’s your view on that? Thank you.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Yeah. I would say that. Let’s talk in a few quarters. Right now, obviously, the focus is all about retention as we go through the rebrand on December 1, again, pending final regulatory approval. We feel like we’ve got a good plan, but we’ve got a lot in front of us. We need to execute and stay heads-down, laser-focused on delivering the best possible result as we head into 2026. For our digital business and cross-sell in our retail businesses, our retail openings. We also can walk and chew gum. I would say that. If there’s an opportunity to present itself, I think we’re feeling as though we have a world-class team. We know we have one of the best products, both in OSB and iGaming, in the United States. We think we could compete anywhere.

We’re just not going to be looking to do that in the near term. If opportunities presented themselves or we felt like we were at a point where we’re ready to go elsewhere, we would strongly consider that. It’s just not something that you would expect to hear from us. You shouldn’t expect to hear from us in the shorter term.

Chad Beynon, Analyst, Macquarie: Okay. Thank you. Lastly, on Joliet, have you seen repeat visitation? You talked about some of the activation in the early numbers, and I know it is pretty early overall. Do you think some of the added customers could begin to come at the property maybe at the same rate or pace as your portfolio or kind of what you would expect? Thank you.

Aaron LaBerge, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Hey, Chad. This is Todd. Yeah. Listen, I think there are so many good takeaways right now and, again, at or above our expectations in all the major KVIs. The frequency that we’re seeing there is in line or better than some of our best-performing properties and significantly better than the prior Joliet property. I’d also point to, just in a—there’s a slide in there, and it shows the 42% growth in the database, which is a combination of reactivation as well as new members. Again, you’re catering to—you start looking at total spend at the property. Greatly improved offerings around the food and beverage area. You’ve got people coming in now for more of that entertainment experience that we talked about before.

They’re spending time on a slot machine or a table game or electronic table game and then making their way to food and beverage and then hopefully back to the gaming floor. From a frequency standpoint, when you start evaluating how properties perform, you look at guest count, you look at frequency, you look at daily spend. All of those are going in a very good direction.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Raisa, if we could take one more question, please.

Rachel, Conference Moderator: Absolutely. Our final question will come from Jeffrey Austin Stantial with Stifel. Your line is open.

Jeffrey Austin Stantial, Analyst, Stifel: Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for squeezing us in. Maybe starting off on the land-based business, with margins down about 90 basis points year over year in the quarter. Jay or Todd, whoever wants to take this, can you just give us a sense for how margins trended for that cohort of assets that were not impacted by new supply? And then if you take that even one step further, can you unpack some of the key drivers to that performance? Meaning, was there more geographic mix shift in taxes again? How has wage inflation trended? Are there other pockets of inflation right now? Just any color there would be great. Thanks.

Aaron LaBerge, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Yeah. Thanks. This is Todd. I think it’s, again, directionally focused on that slide 12, and it’ll show you. The impact on both revenue and flow-through. But then you start looking at some of the expense items that I mentioned earlier with both marketing as well as labor. Also, keep in mind, this will come up periodically, but you’ve got your control ball, and then there’s the payroll-related. Every now and then, you do see a little bit of an uptick in payroll-related. We did see some of that, especially in the south segment. You also, we’ve got some nice properties that have high-end play. At times, you’re going to take a small hit to bad debt expense. There are those types of things that find their way in and out of an income statement. This quarter, we happen to have a few more going that way.

I think overall, looking at October trends, really nice year-over-year. You’re starting to see the state numbers come out, and you’ll see that trend continue. Again, not just us, healthy for the entire industry. Where September ended, October took right back off, obviously helped by the calendar with five Fridays. We’re really happy with the way Q4 started out. Felicia touched on the first weekend. That continued into the month of November as well.

Jeffrey Austin Stantial, Analyst, Stifel: That’s great. Thanks for that color, Todd. Switching gears back over to the interactive side, I think, Jay, you talked throughout the call on reallocation of resources over to iCasino and the Canadian business and then more of that higher-value player cohort. As we just think about the benefits of sort of more financial and operational resources being freed up, I’m curious what sort of opportunities you see more on the product development side, if this can increase your philosophy of new games coming out, maybe optimization of the CRM and the bonusing models, anything like that. Back on the marketing side of things, should we just think about this as more pushing heavier into UA reinvestment for that higher LTV iCasino-led player?

How should we just think about maybe other marketing channels that you might now push on, whether that’s more top-of-funnel spend outside of ESPN driving awareness for theScore brand in the U.S. or maybe more allocating resources further down into the funnel to higher CAC channels? Just any thoughts there would be great. Thanks.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: Hi. This is Aaron. So a few things. One, on the marketing side, if you think about ESPN Bet and the marketing spend that we had there, it was a national brand and a national platform. We spent a lot of time trying to make that work. At the same time, we do have a set of marketing spend that we manage ourselves around performance, marketing, and acquisition that is very effective for us from a CAC perspective. If you look at our growth in iCasino, largely part of that is coming not only from our retail database, but also from our targeted marketing. Now, all the marketing spend that we dropped to.

Our operating model from the ESPN deal is now going to be able to be applied in a very precise fashion, targeting states that are iCasino and OSB only, iCasino, OSB, and retail. Ontario, Alberta’s coming. We feel like we have a lot more control and precision. From a marketing perspective, and it’s been working already. We are not guessing about how effective this will be. We now have more money to actually drive the business. From a product perspective, if you look at the difference between ESPN Bet from a year ago to today, it’s night and day. By the way, I just came out with a report. ESPN Bet was most improved. Our retention is better than it’s ever been. The product is very competitive. Those same people are actually our team that builds our casino product as well.

If you think about the level of innovation, the velocity of change to the app, a lot of that is going to apply to our casino product as well. Because obviously, in a casino-first strategy, theScore is going to be a big component of that and theScore Bet. A lot of our development time is going to be spent on making sure that we have the best casino product in market. The same people that have been building that for ESPN Bet and focusing all of our resources to try to make that work, given our expectations there, are now going to be working on Hollywood as well. We are really excited about the product. We are really excited about the marketing flexibility.

I mean, as Jay said, between theScore Media, theScore Bet, and Hollywood Casino, these are brands that we own, and we control everything about how those operate. So we’re pretty optimistic about moving forward.

Jeffrey Austin Stantial, Analyst, Stifel: That’s great. Thanks for that color, Aaron.

Aaron LaBerge, Executive, Penn Entertainment: Yeah.

Jay Snowden, CEO, Penn Entertainment: All right. Thank you, everybody, for dialing in. We look forward to speaking with all of you again in February on our Q4 call. Have a great day.

Rachel, Conference Moderator: This concludes today’s program. Thank you for your participation, and you may disconnect at any time.

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