^ Original-Research: ZEAL Network SE - from NuWays AG

15.10.2024 / 09:00 CET/CEST Dissemination of a Research, transmitted by EQS News - a service of EQS Group AG. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this research. The result of this research does not constitute investment advice or an invitation to conclude certain stock exchange transactions.

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Classification of NuWays AG to ZEAL Network SE

Company Name: ZEAL Network SE ISIN: DE000ZEAL241

Reason for the research: Update Recommendation: Kaufen from: 15.10.2024 Target price: EUR 54.00 Target price on sight of: 12 months Last rating change: Analyst: Henry Wendisch

Google bans ads from illegal lottery providers

Last month, Google update its advertisement policies regarding gambling and games, which only allows whitelisted operators to advertise on Google, helping the regulator to battle the illegal lottery market. While impacts for ZEAL are hard to quantify, we nevertheless regard it as positive news.

Effective 25th September 2024, Google only allows companies whitelisted by the GGL (Gemeinsame Glückspielbehörde der Länder, German Gambling authority) to run ads for their offerings. Consequently, companies without a GGL license had their advertisement certification revoked on that day. This also includes gambling aggregation services (such as landing pages), thus also preventing a bypass of the ban.

This not only follows Meta's gambling advertisement policy, which is in place since 2014 and also requires companies to be whitelisted by the GGL, but also closes a gap for illegal competition in ZEAL's most important advertisement channels.

The ad-bans should help the GGL to fight the illegal lottery market in Germany. While existing measures such as IP- and payment blocking against illegal offerings in Germany not only take time, but also need a court decision, are thus not as effective as intended. Therefore, the decision by Google to stop the advertisement does not stop illegal operations, but could prevent further growth of the black market.

The latter is key for the legal market, as uninformed consumers, especially those that switch from offline lottery to online, cannot differentiate at first sight whether a provider is legal or not. This implies, that now the legal online lottery providers (ZEAL and the federal state's lottery operators landing page lotto.de) are competing against each other at online marketing channels, such as Google. A potential positive impact for ZEAL and/or the legal lottery market is hard to quantify as neither the black market nor their marketing budgets are known, however the expected absence of illegal competition on Google could lead to falling customer acquisitions costs, as the pay-per-click advertising auction for certain buzzwords should have less bidders, in our view.

This bodes especially well for ZEAL, which recorded new records in marketing efficiency earlier this year. Against this backdrop, we reiterate our BUY recommendation with an unchanged PT of EUR 54.00, based on DCF.

You can download the research here: http://www.more-ir.de/d/31051.pdf For additional information visit our website: www.nuways-ag.com/research

Contact for questions: NuWays AG - Equity Research Web: www.nuways-ag.com Email: research@nuways-ag.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/nuwaysag Adresse: Mittelweg 16-17, 20148 Hamburg, Germany ++++++++++ Diese Meldung ist keine Anlageberatung oder Aufforderung zum Abschluss bestimmter Börsengeschäfte. Offenlegung möglicher Interessenskonflikte nach § 85 WpHG beim oben analysierten Unternehmen befinden sich in der vollständigen Analyse. ++++++++++

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2008237 15.10.2024 CET/CEST

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Quelle: dpa-Afx