Item 1. Business
ITEM 1. BUSINESS
Business Overview
Our mission is to entertain the world through infinite ways to play.
We are one of the world’s leading developers of mobile games creating fun, innovative experiences that entertain and engage our users. We have built best-in-class live game operations services and a proprietary technology platform to support our portfolio of games which enable us to drive strong user engagement and monetization. Our games are free-to-play, and we are experts in providing novel, curated in-game content and offers to our users, at optimal points in their game journeys. Our players love our games because they are fun, creative, engaging, and kept fresh through a steady release of new features that are customized for different player segments. As a result, we have steadily increased our user base and paying users, and we have retained users over long periods of time.
We have primarily grown our game portfolio through acquisitions. Once we acquire games, we enhance the scale and profitability of those games by applying our live operations services and our technology platform, the Playtika Boost Platform. By leveraging this platform, our game studios can dedicate a greater portion of their time to creating innovative content, features, and experiences for players. We also develop new games using our internal development teams and infrastructure, applying learnings from our existing games.
We have a powerful combination of scale, growth and operating cash flow. In the year ended December 31, 2020, we generated $2,371.5 million in revenues, net income of $92.1 million and $941.6 million in Adjusted EBITDA, representing a net income margin of 3.9% and an Adjusted EBITDA Margin of 39.7%.
We were founded in Israel in 2010, when we released our first game, Slotomania , which currently remains the largest game in our portfolio based on revenues. On January 15, 2021, we became a publicly traded company with our common stock traded on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol “PLTK .”
Our Core Strengths
Portfolio of sustainable, top grossing games with a loyal user base
Our strategy is to focus on a select number of games that we believe have the potential for high revenues and longevity that we can continue to grow through our live operations expertise. Our goal is to create games that are highly engaging and foster social connection among our players. We build long-term, sustainable games by employing a combination of creative and technical staff that includes storytellers, coders, artists, and data-scientists.
We are experts in live operations
We run best-in-class live operations for our games, which drive the successful engagement and monetization of our users. Through our live operations, we actively manage and enhance players’ in-game experiences by analyzing individual gameplay and designing game experiences suited to user preferences. By delivering content, offers, and features to users at the right times during their gameplay, we drive paying user conversion, continued monetization, and long-term paying user retention. Our proprietary Playtika Boost Platform provides each of our game studios with the core technical functionality and live operations services infrastructure needed to run games at scale and rapidly incorporate the latest available functional enhancements.
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Our financial discipline drives our success and provides us greater flexibility to deploy capital
Our attractive margin profile is driven by our ability to retain paying users over the long term, our ownership of substantially all of the intellectual property used in our mobile games, and financial discipline. This results in a superior margin profile and cash flow that we can use to reinvest in acquisitions and our business.
Founder-led management team with longstanding tenure at Playtika
We are led by our visionary co-founder, Robert Antokol, who has managed Playtika since inception, transforming the company from a small games business, through numerous acquisitions and steady organic growth, to become one of the largest mobile games platforms in the world. Our 14 senior management team members have been working with us for a median tenure of ten years. The tenure of our executive management team has created a chemistry that reinforces stability in our culture and strategy.
Successful track record of pursuing value accretive acquisitions
Our acquisition strategy is focused on identifying and acquiring games with broad appeal that we believe can benefit from the Playtika Boost Platform, our operational experience, and our live operations services. We maintain a highly disciplined approach to acquisitions, and have a proven history of making acquisitions at attractive prices and achieving meaningful synergies. We have also acquired technology services, enhancing our marketing, artificial intelligence and R&D competencies.
Data-driven performance marketing capabilities drive our high-ROI user acquisition
We leverage our centralized marketing team to achieve efficiencies across our portfolio of games. Our performance marketing capabilities focus on cost-effectively acquiring users. Our user acquisition strategy is centered on a payback period methodology and we optimize spend between the acquisition of new users and the reactivation of inactive players.
Our Live Operations Services and the Playtika Boost Platform
Since our founding, we have developed most of the core technical functionality and services that form the backbone to support our games. We have built these core technical functions and services, and created a scalable, proprietary technology platform, the Playtika Boost Platform, that enhances our live operations services across our games.
The Playtika Boost Platform, which we make available to new games and game studios as soon as they become part of our portfolio, includes:
• Meta-games and monetization events, including tournaments, challenges, and missions;
• Payment systems and payment page optimization tools;
• Loyalty programs;
• Data analytics infrastructure, including business intelligence, simulation, and modelling frameworks and dashboards;
• Tailored user data, including segmentation and grouping, enabling customizable content curation;
• Social gaming infrastructure, including multiplayer game services, match-making algorithms, clans, and intra-game social networking; and
• Customer service, monitoring, disaster recovery, alerts, and security.
There are also a number of additional services we provide to studios, based on their game’s needs and strategies, including:
• Player Journey: Proprietary software that allows game operators to create and deploy personalized game content in real-time without extensive software development;
• Campaign Manager: Suite of tools and systems enabling outbound communication with players (push notifications, email, SMS, etc.);
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• Marketing Suite: Enhanced tools for managing user acquisition and retargeting campaigns, and operating ad-monetization and cross-promotion activities;
• Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning: Software and algorithms to support artificial intelligence and machine learning models to enhance and supplement traditional data analytics;
• Customer Service: Additional tools and software for customer relationship management, account management, and customer service activities; and
• Back Office Services Software (BOSS): Complete suite of back-office support software that helps manage day-to-day game operations and configurations.
Our live operations services and the Playtika Boost Platform are constantly evolving and expanding, as our culture of innovation and optimization allows us to share and implement improvements across our portfolio of games and game studios. The Playtika Boost Platform allows us to analyze data across the full user lifecycle—from user acquisition, through monetization and retention—helping our studios make smarter decisions related to player engagement and monetization. We are able to use our scale to gain significant insight into the operations of our games and refine and implement effective strategies with respect to feature innovation, content cadence, loyalty rewards, game economies, and player segmentation. The Playtika Boost Platform also greatly enhances our acquisition and integration capabilities, providing an effective method to rapidly enhance the infrastructure, growth and success of acquired games and game studios.
Feature Development
We are experts at creating features and player experiences that optimize player engagement, resulting in increased conversion and monetization. We are focused on continuing to implement and enhance features that keep games fresh and increase user engagement, including awarding in-game virtual items, providing engaging new game themes, motifs, challenges and in-game missions, as well as in-game chat and messaging capabilities. We serve these features to our users based on their preferences and the optimal timing during each player’s gameplay.
Our Acquisitions Strategy
We maintain a highly disciplined approach to acquisitions, and have a proven history of acquiring games and game studios at attractive prices and achieving meaningful synergies from each of those games by leveraging our live operations services, including the Playtika Boost Platform. Over the past 8 years, we have successfully acquired a number of mobile games and game studios, including Seriously (2019), Supertreat (2019), Wooga (2018), Jelly Button (2017), House of Fun (2014), World Series of Poker (2013) and Bingo Blitz (2012).
Generally, our strategy involves identifying potential acquisition targets that fall into one of three categories:
• Newly developed or underperforming games with a proven game concept in our core genres to facilitate improvement in engagement, monetization, and retention;
• Established games in our core genres, to increase the trajectory of the games; or
• Acquisitions to enhance our marketing or technology capabilities.
After an acquisition, we seek to integrate the acquired game or game studio into the Playtika Boost Platform, providing access to our technical infrastructure, and we deploy our live operations services. Our ability to quickly integrate acquisitions and realize synergies enables us to compete favorably against other bidders. Additionally, our geographic diversity allows us to integrate acquisition targets, especially studios located in Europe near our other studios and our headquarters in Israel. We view acquisitions as an effective strategy to expand the scale and scope of our mobile games and as a complementary strategy to new game development.
Marketing and Player Lifecycle Management
Over our ten year history, we have gained significant expertise in acquiring new users, converting users to payers, retaining active users, and re-engaging inactive ones. Our success stems from a deep and nuanced understanding of the key aspects of data-based marketing strategies applicable to our industry, including how to measure successful user acquisition as it relates
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to mobile games, where to allocate marketing spend, how to optimize media buying budgets, and how to design ads that attract users who are likely to install and play our games.
We develop tailored monetization and retention strategies for different parts of our users’ lifecycles, including before they become paying users, after they become paying users, and for users who become inactive. We operate a centralized marketing team that performs key functions like media buying on behalf of our various studios. We have also made acquisitions to bring certain marketing capabilities in house to increase our effectiveness.
Payback period-oriented approach to user acquisition Our disciplined user acquisition strategy is centered on a payback period approach, which focuses on user monetization efforts that recoups our marketing spend during a reasonable timeframe. We focus on efficiently acquiring users that can be active for long periods of time. We acquire users from more than 60 different sources, including mobile ad networks, search and social networks.
We use re-targeting campaigns to reactivate our inactive users. We have recently made significant investments in our measurement and re-targeting capabilities, and intend to continue to focus on these capabilities, particularly as many of our games were released several years ago. We leverage these investments to create personalized retargeting campaigns to re-engage former users.
Our Portfolio of Games
Our portfolio includes 15 games that we actively manage, and our top nine games collectively represented 96.6% of our revenues for the year ended December 31, 2020. Many of our games are classic in nature with mass appeal due to their highly engaging game mechanics. Our portfolio includes both casual and casino-themed games. For the year ended December 31, 2020, our casual games generated 43.6% of our revenues, with our casino-themed games accounting for the remaining 56.4%. Our oldest and largest game franchises have accounted for a significant portion of our growth. Our two largest games, Slotomania and Bingo Blitz, generated approximately half of our revenues for the year ended December 31, 2020.
Overview of Top 9 Games
• Slotomania is a premier social slots game with an inventory of over 300 original slot games where players earn in-game virtual rewards and virtual coins and have the ability to purchase virtual items, including virtual coins, boosts and other items to further their progression and unlock more virtual rewards.
• Bingo Blitz is a bingo adventure where users progress through various levels in the theme of major global cities and are able to connect with others to earn virtual items and bonuses, including additional virtual coins and power-ups.
• House of Fun features an inventory of over 400 uniquely-themed slot games with a standard leveling system where players earn virtual in-game items including virtual rewards, bonuses and coins progressing through various missions that are updated regularly.
• Caesars Slots features an inventory of over 200 slot games developed to have a look and feel similar to those played in casinos, including high roller lounges only accessible to those with a certain amount of virtual coins and a special “Golden Room” that provides players with exclusive features.
• World Series of Poker is the official social app of the World Series of Poker and allows players to compete with friend and other players to win their own virtual World Series of Poker Bracelet.
• Best Fiends is a classic match-3 game with RPG-like character development featuring an expansive story set in the mystical world of Minutia.
• June’s Journey is a hidden object game that is set in the 1920’s, where players step into the role of amateur detective June Parker to investigate mysterious quests.
• Solitaire Grand Harvest modernizes the classic solitaire game by adding new elements and challenges.
• Board Kings creates a unique social experience by combining elements of city building with traditional board games.
Research and Development
Our research and design team has extensive expertise in creating new content and gameplay features as well as proprietary tools and systems to enable the efficient design, development and implementation of new content and features. For example,
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we have recently automated certain quality assurance procedures for many of our games, which significantly increased the frequency with which we are able to deploy new content and features for those games, allowing us to create and deploy more content quicker to enhance monetization. We invest heavily in research and development, and approximately 40% of our employees are employed in research and development, which enables us to consistently introduce updates and enhancements to our games on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.
We have a diverse pool of talent located in game development hubs, including in Israel, Germany, Finland, the United Kingdom, and Canada. This provides us with both a funnel of new, internally developed game concepts, ideas for improvements to our systems, and close relationships with those local game-development communities.
Competition
We face significant competition in all aspects of our business. Our primary competitors include Tencent Holdings, Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Zynga, AppLovin and Product Madness/Big Fish Games. On the broadest scale, we compete for the leisure time, attention and discretionary spending of our players versus other forms of offline and online entertainment, including social media, reading and other video games on the basis of a number of factors, including quality of player experience, breadth and depth of gameplay, ability to create or license compelling content, brand awareness and reputation and access to distribution channels.
We believe these factors, among other things, enable us to compete favorably in the market. Our industry and the markets for our games, however, are highly competitive, rapidly evolving, fragmented and subject to changing technology, shifting needs and frequent introductions of new games, development platforms and services. Successful execution of our strategy depends on our continuous ability to attract and retain players, expand the market for our games, convert inactive players into paying users, maintain a technological edge and offer new capabilities to players. In some cases, we compete against gaming operators who could expand their product lines to include more directly competitive games that could compete with our content.
Many of our current and potential competitors enjoy substantial competitive advantages, such as greater name recognition, longer operating histories, greater financial, technical and other resources, and, in some cases, the ability to rapidly combine online platforms with full-time and temporary employees. Internationally, local competitors may have greater brand recognition than us in their local country and a stronger understanding of local culture and commerce. They may also offer their products and services in local languages we do not offer.
Intellectual Property
We consider our intellectual property rights, including our trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets, in the aggregate, material to our business. We endeavor to protect our investment in our intellectual property by seeking protection in the jurisdictions where we do business, as appropriate. We generally obtain trademark protection and often seek to register trademarks for the names and designs under which we market and license our games. As of December 31, 2020, we owned approximately 728 registered trademarks in the United States, and approximately 632 registered trademarks in jurisdictions outside of the United States. Additionally, many of the feature elements of our games, including game characters, are subject to copyright protection.
In addition to the intellectual property that we own, we license certain intellectual property from third parties. In particular, we license intellectual property related to our Caesars Slots and World Series of Poker games from CIE. CIE has granted us an exclusive, worldwide and royalty-bearing license to certain intellectual property associated with World Series of Poker through September 23, 2031, and an exclusive, worldwide and royalty-bearing sublicense to certain trademarks and domain names associated with Caesars Slots through December 31, 2026. These licenses permit the development, design, manufacture, offering for sale, advertising, promotion, distribution, sale and use of Caesars Slots and World Series of Poker intellectual property in social and free-to-play games.
We believe the value associated with our brands and the brands licensed from CIE under which we market and license our games contributes to the appeal and success of our games, and our future ability to develop, acquire or license new brand names of similar quality is important to our continued success. Therefore, we continue to invest in the recognition of our
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brands and the brands we license. Despite our efforts to protect our proprietary rights, unauthorized parties may attempt to copy or otherwise obtain and use our technology. In addition, third parties may initiate litigation against us alleging infringement of their proprietary rights or declaring their non-infringement of our intellectual property rights. Effective intellectual property protection may not be available in the United States or other jurisdictions where our games are distributed. Further, we may be unable to renew our existing brand and content licenses on favorable terms or at all and to obtain additional licenses, which could materially harm our business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects. See “Risk Factors—Risks Related to Intellectual Property.”
Government Regulation
We are subject to various state, federal and international laws and regulations that apply to companies operating online, including over the internet and mobile platforms, such as those relating to privacy, data security, consumer protection, protection of minors, advertising and marketing, intellectual property, competition, and taxation, among others, all of which are continuously evolving and developing. As we offer our games in more countries worldwide, foreign jurisdictions may claim we are required to comply with local laws, including in jurisdictions where we have no local presence, offices, or other equipment. It is also likely that as our business grows and evolves and our games are played in a greater number of countries, we will become subject to laws and regulations in additional jurisdictions. The scope and interpretation of the laws and regulations that are or may be applicable to us are often uncertain and may conflict. Additional laws in these and other areas affecting our business are likely to be enacted in the future, which could limit or require changes to the ways in which we conduct our business and could both increase our compliance costs and decrease our revenues.
If we become liable under additional laws or regulations, or we are not able to comply with these additional laws or regulations, we could be directly harmed, and we may be forced to implement new measures to reduce our exposure to this liability. This may require us to expend substantial resources, modify our games, or block users from a particular jurisdiction, each of which would harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, the increased attention focused upon liability issues as a result of lawsuits and legislative proposals could harm our reputation or otherwise impact the growth of our business.
Some of our games are based upon traditional casino games, such as slots and poker. We believe that our games and game features do not constitute gambling and are intended for entertainment purposes only. Our games do not offer an opportunity to win real money. However, there is significant opposition in some jurisdictions to social gaming, including social casino gaming, and some jurisdictions have expressed concern that social casino games, in particular, present significant risks of encouraging gambling behavior especially with respect to children and people who already have gambling problems. Anti-gaming groups in several states and countries have specifically targeted social casino games, which could lead these jurisdictions to adopt legislation or impose a regulatory framework to govern social gaming or social casino gaming specifically. For example, a bill introduced in Australia in 2020 would amend that country’s Interactive Gambling Act of 2001 to ban online social casino games. These opposition efforts could lead to a prohibition on social gaming or social casino gaming altogether, restrict our ability to advertise our games or substantially increase our costs to comply with regulations, all of which could have an adverse effect on our results of operations, cash flows and financial condition. We cannot predict the likelihood, timing, scope or terms of any such legislation or regulation or the extent to which they may affect our business. Furthermore, in October 2020 and January 2021 plaintiffs in several U.S. states sued Apple and/or Google alleging that the platforms violated state gambling laws by allowing the plaintiffs to download and play social casino games, including certain of our social casino games. We cannot predict the outcome of these lawsuits and these lawsuits, or similar suits in the future, could cause Google, Apple, or other third-party platform providers to deny our social casino games access to their platforms or the platforms could seek to pass on liability, including defense costs, for these suits to us under the indemnity provisions in our agreements with such platforms, which could have a material adverse effect on our business.
Additionally, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has previously held that a social casino game produced by one of our competitors should be considered illegal gambling under Washington state law. Similar lawsuits have been filed against other defendants, including us. In April 2018, a putative class action lawsuit was filed against us in federal district court, alleging that certain of our social casino games, among other things, violate Washington State gambling laws and consumer protection laws. In August 2020, we entered into a settlement agreement to settle this matter, which was approved by the court in February 2021. Additional legal proceedings targeting our games and claiming violations of state or federal laws, including gambling laws, could occur, based on the unique and particular laws of each jurisdiction, particularly
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as litigation and regulations continue to evolve. See “Item 3—Legal Proceedings” and “Risk Factors—Legal proceedings may materially adversely affect our business and our results of operations, cash flows and financial condition” for more information.
The widespread implementation of in-game purchases of virtual items and virtual currency in our industry has resulted in the expanded application of existing laws or regulations and has prompted calls for new laws and regulations to address the perceived problems with these virtual items and currency. Calls for legislation have been fueled by complaints from parents whose children have incurred sizeable charges online purchasing virtual currency, “lives” or “power-ups” in order to continue to play or further advance in games advertised as being “free to play.” This may result in legislation affecting how we advertise, operate, and earn revenues in games with these features.
There has been considerable focus on in-game offers to purchase virtual goods or premiums with real world currency (or with virtual in-game currency that can be purchased with real world currency) for which the player doesn’t know prior to purchase the specific digital goods or premiums they will be receiving (sometimes referred to as loot boxes, crates, or mystery prizes). Some commentators have noted that these features are similar to gambling because users are providing something of value for the chance to win a prize, with a large number of prizes having relatively modest value or utility and fewer having significant value or utility. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission, or the FTC, held a public workshop on loot boxes in August 2019, and at least one bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate that would regulate loot boxes in games marketed to minors. Loot boxes have been banned in Belgium and the Netherlands, and gambling regulators in 16 jurisdictions (Austria, Czech Republic, France, Gibraltar, Ireland, Isle of Man, Jersey, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Washington State, United States, and the United Kingdom) signed an agreement in 2018 to investigate the role of loot boxes in digital games. China has imposed stringent requirements and limitation on the offering of loot boxes including, among other things, that loot boxes cannot be acquired with real money or virtual currency, that all items available in loot boxes must be obtainable through other means, and the odds of winning must be published. Japan has been advancing a self-regulatory approach to loot boxes. The outcome of many of these initiatives is not yet known, but we anticipate there may be legislation forthcoming in at least some of these jurisdictions that could affect how we offer these features which could negatively affect our revenues.
Data Privacy and Security
As an Israeli headquartered company with users around the globe, we collect, process, store, use, and share data, some of which contains personal information, in connection with operating our business. Consequently, our business is subject not only to the Israeli Protection of Privacy Law, 5741-1981, or the PPL, and the Privacy Protection Regulations (Data Security), 5777-2017, but also to a number of U.S. and international laws and regulations governing data privacy and security, including with respect to the collection, processing, storage, use, transmission, sharing, and protection of personal information and other consumer data. Such laws and regulations may be inconsistent across jurisdictions or conflict with other rules. The applicability of these laws and regulations to us, and their scope and interpretation, are often uncertain, particularly with respect to laws and regulations outside the United States.
For example, the European Union has adopted strict data privacy and security regulations. The European Union’s GDPR, which became effective in May 2018, imposes strict requirements on controllers and processors of personal data, including, for example, higher standards for obtaining consent from individuals to process their personal data, more robust disclosures to individuals and a strengthened individual data rights regime, and shortened timelines for data breach notifications. The GDPR created new compliance obligations applicable to our business and some of our players, which could require us to self-determine how to interpret and implement these obligations, change our business practices and expose us to lawsuits (including class action or similar representative lawsuits) by consumers or consumer organizations for alleged breach of data protection laws. The GDPR increases financial penalties for noncompliance (including possible fines of up to 4% of global annual revenues for the preceding financial year or €20 million (whichever is higher) for the most serious violations). The United Kingdom operates a separate but similar regime to the European Union that allows for fines of up to the greater of £17.5 million or 4% of the total worldwide annual turnover of the preceding financial year. Further, beginning January 1, 2021, we have to comply with the GDPR and also the United Kingdom GDPR (UK GDPR), which, together with the amended United Kingdom Data Protection Act 2018, retains the GDPR in United Kingdom national law. The relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union in relation to certain aspects of data protection law remains unclear, and it is unclear how United Kingdom data protection laws and regulations will develop in the medium to longer term, and
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how data transfers to and from the United Kingdom will be regulated in the long term. Currently there is a four to six-month grace period agreed to in the European Union and United Kingdom Trade and Cooperation Agreement, ending June 30, 2021 at the latest, during which period the parties are to discuss an adequacy decision. However, it is not clear whether (and when) an adequacy decision may be granted by the European Commission enabling data transfers from European Union member states to the United Kingdom on a long term basis without additional measures. These changes may lead to additional costs and increase our overall risk exposure.
In addition, the scope of data privacy regulations worldwide continues to evolve. Further, new, increasingly restrictive regulations are coming into force all around the world, such as in Thailand and Brazil, but also within the United States. For example, in 2018, California enacted the California Consumer Privacy Act, or the CCPA, which became effective on January 1, 2020.
In short, the CCPA:
• provides California consumers with new rights to access and request deletion of their personal information, opt out of certain personal information sharing, and receive detailed information about how their personal information is collected, used, and shared;
• will affect marketing activities due to the CCPA’s broad definitions of personal information and sale, and
• provides for private actions and permits class actions in the event of a data breach which could result in businesses being subject to substantial statutory fines in cases involving thousands of impacted consumers where the business is found to have failed to implement and maintain reasonable and appropriate security procedures.
The effects of the CCPA are significant and have required, and could continue to require, us to modify our data, security, and marketing practices and policies, and to incur substantial costs and expenses in an ongoing effort to comply with the CCPA and other applicable data protection laws Some observers have noted that the CCPA could mark the beginning of a trend toward more stringent state privacy legislation in the U.S., which could increase our potential liability and adversely affect our business. Further, in November 2020, California voters passed the California Privacy Rights Act, or CPRA. The CPRA, which is expected to take effect on January 1, 2023 and to create obligations with respect to certain data relating to consumers as of January 1, 2022, significantly expands the CCPA, including by introducing additional obligations such as data minimization and storage limitations, granting additional rights to consumers, such as correction of personal information and additional opt-out rights, and creates a new entity, the California Privacy Protection Agency, to implement and enforce the law. The CCPA and CPRA could subject us to additional compliance costs as well as potential fines, individual claims and commercial liabilities.
Israel has also implemented data protection laws and regulations, including the PPL. The PPL imposes certain obligations on the owners of databases containing personal data, including, e.g., a requirement to register databases with certain characteristics, an obligation to notify data subjects of the purposes for which their personal data is collected and processed and of the disclosure of such data to third parties, a requirement to respond to certain requests from data subjects to access, rectify and/or delete personal data relating to them, and an obligation to maintain the security of personal data. In addition, the Protection of Privacy Regulations (Data Security), 5777-2017, that entered into force in May 2018, impose comprehensive data security requirements on the processing of personal data. The Protection of Privacy Regulations (Transfer of Data to Overseas Databases), 5761-2001, further impose certain conditions on cross-border transfers of personal data from databases in Israel. Moreover, the European Commission is currently reevaluating its adequacy decision with respect to the flow of personal data into Israel. A change in this adequacy decision might affect the conditions in which we will be able to transfer personal data from the European Union (and Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland) into Israel.
Certain violations of the PPL are considered a criminal and/or a civil offense and could expose the violating entity to criminal, administrative, and financial sanctions, as well as to civil actions. Additionally, the Israel Privacy Protection Authority, or the Privacy Protection Authority, may issue a public statement that an entity violated the PPL, and such a determination could potentially be used against such entity in civil litigation. In July 2020, the Israeli Ministry of Justice indicated that it intends to promote amendments to the PPL designed, among other things, to enhance the Privacy Protection Authority’s investigative and enforcement powers (including powers to impose fines) and to broaden data subject rights.
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In addition, there currently are a number of other proposals related to data privacy and security pending before several legislative and regulatory bodies. For example, the European Union is contemplating the adoption of the Regulation on Privacy and Electronic Communications, or the e-Privacy Regulation, which is currently making its way through the European Union legislative process. The current draft of the e-Privacy Regulation imposes strict opt-in e-marketing rules which potentially require new consents (with limited exceptions for business to business communications) and significantly increases fining powers to the same levels as the GDPR. Regulation of cookies and web beacons may lead to broader restrictions on our online activities, including efforts to understand followers’ internet usage and promote ourselves to them.
We are subject to a variety of laws in the United States and other non-U.S. jurisdictions regarding data privacy, cybersecurity, and consumer protection, which are continuously evolving and developing. The scope and interpretation of the laws that are or may be applicable to us are often uncertain and may be conflicting, particularly laws outside the United States. It is also likely that as our business grows and evolves and our games are played in a greater number of countries, we will become subject to additional data privacy, cybersecurity, and consumer protection laws and regulations in additional jurisdictions. If we are not able to comply with these laws or regulations or if we become liable under these laws or regulations, we could be directly harmed, and we may be forced to implement new measures to reduce our exposure to this liability. This may require us to expend substantial resources, modify our games, or block users from a particular jurisdiction, each of which would harm our business, financial condition, and results of operations. In addition, the increased attention focused upon liability issues as a result of lawsuits and legislative proposals could harm our reputation or otherwise impact the growth of our business. Any costs incurred as a result of this potential liability could harm our business and results of operations.
Human Capital
As of December 31, 2020, we had approximately 3,800 employees. We believe our people are one of our most important competitive advantages. We rely on our highly skilled, technically trained and creative employees with desirable skill sets, including game designers, engineers and project managers, to develop new technologies and create innovative games.
To win and keep our talented employees, we devote significant resources to identifying, hiring, training, successfully integrating and retaining these employees. We believe we are able to attract and retain top talent by creating a culture that challenges and engages our employees, offering them opportunities to learn, grow and achieve their career goals. We offer an array of career development services to our employees including access to professional trainings through our Playtika Academy program or external resources, access to leadership and manager trainings, including our annual leadership workshop and mentoring opportunities. Further, we believe that our commitment to a culture of inclusion is integral to our goal of attracting and retaining the best talent and ultimately driving our business performance.
We offer comprehensive compensation and benefits packages to our employees, including, for our U.S. employees, a 401(k) Plan, medical, dental and vision benefits, medical and dependent care flexible spending accounts, short-term and long-term disability insurance and life and accidental death disability insurance. Generally, our non-U.S. employees are eligible for welfare benefits, annual vacation leave, sick leave, convalescence pay, transportation expense reimbursement, advanced study funds, life and disability insurance and other customary or mandatory social benefits. We also offer stock-based compensation as a way to attract and retain key talent. See Note 10 to our audited consolidated financial statements and “Item 7—Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations—Stock-based compensation” for further discussion of our benefit plans and stock-based compensation.
Website and Available Information
Our principal executive offices are located at HaChoslim St 8 Herzliya Pituarch, Israel and our telephone number is 972-73-316-3251. Our website address is www.playtika.com . The information contained on, or that can be accessed through, our website is not incorporated by reference into, and is not a part of, this filing.
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