Interview with Trophy Games CEO Søren Gleie

For those who are not familiar with Trophy Games – can you briefly describe your business, what type of games you develop, and which markets you target?

We’re a developer of manager games built around real-world interests and people’s passions for trains, airplanes, trucks and farms. We take these themes and realities, and we put them into games. If you work in an airline and you create an airline manager or airline company, it will feel the same and it’ll be the same type of decisions you’ll be facing in terms of running your company in the game as in real life.

Our games are mostly on mobile, but also on various other platforms. Our largest series, called Transport Manager, consists of all these different themed manager games: airline, truck, farm, shipping, train, energy, etc. The games sort of reuse the same format, because running a shipping company and running an airline company involves a lot of the same mechanics in a sense.

What would you say differentiates Trophy Games from other developers in the management and transport genres?

First of all, the level of realism. Secondly, we don’t really have many competitors in that sense. I think many others in the same space are doing something that’s slightly different. We are very focused on the details and the very in-depth gameplay. We also have technology that makes it difficult for others to compete with us. All games take place on a real-world map, which is something potential competitors would need to replicate. We also have a long history of working methodically and incrementally in terms of refining and improving everything about our games and what we do as a company, which can be seen in the fact that we have grown every year for 20 years in a row.

The Transport series, with titles such as Truck Manager, Farm Manager, and Airline Manager, accounted for about 89 % of revenue during Q3 2025. Why do you think this particular genre has been so successful, and how do you view the potential for further growth in this segment?

I think we have carved out a niche for ourselves. We are lucky that we’re able to do performance marketing on the games and be profitable even with some very strict criteria for the amount of time we want it to take to become profitable on our marketing. Usually in the game genre companies are doing one to two years before reaching break-even right now, while we are aiming for six months, so we’re actually pretty conservative.

Secondly, I think we have a strong publishing division of the company that’s very good at securing the shelf space for all our games and have been increasingly good throughout times. We also have an effective way of cross-promoting within our games, encouraging users to play several of our games and in this way gaining more traction for the algorithms. We have essentially found a format that works, and we are doing more of it while improving the product at the same time. So far, it just keeps growing in terms of the potential.

The games are still considered small compared to what we are seeing in the competitor space. So, I think we definitely have room for improvement, and we’re learning and becoming better every day. It’s hard to say how far it can go in that sense.

Farm Manager was launched in June 2025 and generated DKK 4.3 million in monthly revenue already during Q3. What made the launch so successful, and what lessons are you taking with you for future releases?

This is going to be a little bit nerdy, but we learned a lesson already with Energy Manager, which didn’t become a big success. However, we try to take something with us from every game we launch, and in Energy Manager, which actually has our best KPIs in terms of player engagement, we saw that being able to put things on the map helped a lot in terms of how entertaining people found the games. We were very happy that it became one of our biggest games so quickly.

In Airline Manager, for example, you have planes flying from A to B and back, but there isn’t really something on the map itself. In Energy Manager, you could put windmills, power plants and energy generators etc. That was the main lesson we took with us to Farm Manager and part of the reason why we wanted to make it so, to have all these things happening on the map and staying there. With each new game we make, we make something better and more mature that works better across the board.

How do you work to extend the life cycle of your games and increase revenue over time? Do you have a plan for this?

All the games are designed in a way so the players don’t really get tired of them. Unlike games that you can complete, our games go on forever or until the user gets tired of playing – this automatically taps into the long lifetime of the games.

We’re also very focused on not spending unnecessary resources trying to keep games alive. We’re very data-driven in terms of deciding which new features actually add value to the games, and at some point, it doesn’t make sense to develop more on a given game. Then we’ll just leave it be, that’s often the point where the game becomes most profitable, when we stop developing and sometimes also stop marketing it – just generating income.

All our games have a very long lifetime. Our first game from 2006, a football manager game, we stopped working on in 2011, including marketing. Now there’s nobody working on it, and since 2011 it’s churned 50% from the top. That’s 14 years later and many of these games in terms of graphics and feel don’t really get old. What can happen is that they will have emptied the audience or they don’t get the shelf space from different platforms because the games are getting old, but essentially, they should remain playable for decades.

In the annual report for 2024, you describe a new Event Center that will create time-limited challenges, co-op modes, and solo matches. What is the vision behind this initiative?

This is definitely the most important thing we have in the pipeline for ensuring longevity of the games, an efficient and cost effective way of adding more fun for the end-game players across the games. Since the games are so similar, we’re able to create a centralized system that supports all of them with very little effort.

For example, if there is an Olympics event in Australia, then in Airline Manager, plane tickets to Australia will suddenly increase in price, while in Energy Manager, maybe the power prices will increase in Australia. These things make the games feel more dynamic and relevant to the users because actual events will have an impact in the games too. Based on some sort of normal live OPS format in terms of joining forces with others to reach goals and things like that. So that’s a way of making sure we can bring new content to the games, but in a very cost-efficient way.

You have a strong financial position with DKK 25.5 million in cash and no interest-bearing debt as of September 30, 2025. How do you plan to use this financial strength going forward – for new games, marketing, or potential acquisitions?

Yes, to all of it, however the exact distribution is still a bit uncertain. We’re still looking for M&A targets, but we’re also very picky, because what we have going on in the company is growing so much that we would be limiting our own return on investment if we were to buy a company performing just decently.

We’ve been doing a share buyback program this year, which is still ongoing. That’s part of how we’ll use our funds, but also just having the firepower to be able to act if the right opportunity comes along. We’re still seeing a lot of consolidation in the gaming space, and opportunities can appear out of the blue, so being able to act on that is key.

Which regions do you see as the next major growth areas for your games, and how do you adapt them to attract new markets? For now, your games are compatible with mobiles and PC?

Console isn’t really interesting for us, neither in terms of revenue nor reach to users. We are working a bit on improving our browser versions games revenue-wise. They’re live and functioning but they need to be found by players too, why we are working on getting some advertising up and running.

In terms of untapped potential, we’re doing very well in Western countries, which is partly due to culture, but also because our servers are based in the West. We’re working on distributing servers further from Europe so that the games will feel better and load quicker in other parts of the world. We’re already seeing some impact from that but for now it’s an ongoing process. We currently don’t have very much revenue from Asia, so we’re looking for a potential Asian partner to help us realize the full potential of our portfolio in that region.

You have raised your full-year forecast for 2025 to between DKK 115–121 million in revenue and DKK 23–28 million in EBITDA. What factors drive that confidence, and what risks do you see ahead?

There is several factors, both Farm and Truck Manager has scaled really well this year. Last year our biggest game, Airline Manager had 80,000 daily active users, this year Airline Manager has increased and is now above 100,000 daily active users, while Farm and Truck reached 200,000 daily active users as well as two new games this year. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by their strong start.

Apart from that we have been able to increase ad revenue since we began focusing more on it this summer, since it makes more sense with our large user base. These are the most prominent causes of the guidance adjustments. Initially, we had expected a relatively flat year because we grew so much last year, but we’ve been able to put in quite some growth again this year, which is great in terms of risks.

However, there are risks everywhere, all the time and a lot of game companies need to work with that. We’re well positioned as one of the companies with less risks. First of all, we’re cross-platform and platform-agnostic in a sense. Our games are HTML5-based, thus Unity or Unreal Engine isn’t a risk.

Our games are about themes that don’t go out of style. We don’t depend on viral hits that we need to figure out every once in a while. If people like trains, they’ll probably keep liking trains for a long time, same goes for those who enjoy farming.

We have 20 years of experience navigating these markets and we’re staying alert to new risks. If I had to point to a particular one, I’d mention potential regulation for example EU Digital Fairness Act. We’ve seen politicians ruin businesses and industries loads of times. However, if it becomes reality, it’s going to hit other game companies a lot worse than us – and we’re ready to adapt quickly.

Looking one year ahead – where do you see Trophy Games then, and what key factors will be crucial to getting there?

I think we’ll have more and better games and in terms of key factors to get there, we already have everything in place. We are starting development of two new titles this year, at least one of them will be released next year. We also have a backlog to improve our existing games, we don’t think they’re anywhere near their full potential yet. We just have to continue doing more of what we’re already doing and staying on top of our portfolio. The Rangers, which is coming out next year, also has a lot of things on the wish list, which is a bit of a wild card in terms of where it’s going to end up. And maybe, in addition, some M&A or new games or genre of games that we can integrate into the company.

Why do you think Trophy Games is an interesting investment?

We have a straightforward formula for success with these games. We reuse a lot of the code for the new games, and we cross-promote our portfolio, which I think speaks for itself. It’s probably not an indicator of future success, obviously, but it shows our methodology in terms of how we work, think and strategize long-term. We’re profitable, with no debt, and I think we’re in a very good position to gain market share in the current environment.

We’re different from most other game companies. I don’t think there’s another company that really does quite the same thing we do. We’re sticking to what we know and where we have a lot of experience. We’ve seen a lot of companies try the M&A route or just attempted to do everything at once, they’ve practically all failed. Many of the Swedish companies, for example, are now trying to step back and focus on their core business again.