Meridian Holdings Inc./NV (MRDN) stock intrinsic value fair value estimate & owner earnings analysis

Meridian Holdings (formerly Golden Matrix Group, ticker MRDN since March 2026) is mainly an online and retail sports-betting and casino operator. Its core is MeridianBet, a gaming business founded in 2001 that holds licences across the Balkans, Europe, Africa and Latin America, plus a B2B gaming-platform business and small Australian and UK prize-competition and membership businesses. In 2024 MeridianBet was merged in through a reverse acquisition, so we measure the company from that point: MeridianBet's history for 2023 and the combined company for 2024 and 2025. Earlier Golden Matrix years describe a much smaller, different business and are not used. The shares were reverse-split 1-for-12 in March 2026, and all per-share figures here are on that basis. What the business earns. We start from operating cash flow and subtract the working-capital swings, stock compensation (a real cost, paid in shares) and the part of capital spending needed just to stand still. Spending on platforms, software and equipment is large, about 7% to 15% of revenue, so we treat it as an ongoing cost of running a betting platform and only carve out growth spending in proportion to revenue growth. On that basis owner earnings were $0.93 per share in 2023, about minus $0.22 in 2024 (integration year, heavy capital spending and $4.7 million of stock compensation) and $0.75 in 2025 (about $8.6 million on revenue of $183 million). We use the median, $0.75 per share, as the earnings level. That is a short three-year record, which is one reason the range of outcomes is wide. Accounting points. The 2025 net loss of $92 million is almost entirely non-cash: $91.8 million of write-downs, of which $63.4 million was goodwill from the MeridianBet reverse merger and the Classics prize-competition acquisition. We correctly add that back because it is a sunk acquisition cost, but it is also evidence that the businesses bought are worth much less than was paid, and we reflect that in the bear case rather than by changing the earnings level. Amortisation of intangibles ($9.2 million) is partly covered because we already deduct the $7.5 million a year spent on new software and licences. Growth. 2025 owner earnings rose from a loss to $0.75, which is not a meaningful growth rate, and we assume none: the base case holds earnings flat at $0.75. Revenue has grown from $93 million to $183 million in two years and the first quarter of 2026 was up about 17%, but much of that came from acquisitions and new markets, which are not the kind of steady, self-funded growth we credit; operating cash flow in that quarter was also lower than a year earlier ($5.2 million against $7.7 million). We therefore leave growth out of the base case. Base case, about $8.50 per share. Owner earnings stay at $0.75 per share for roughly 15 to 20 years, supported by long-held licences and MeridianBet's 25-year operating record, then fade gradually because nothing in the filings shows what replaces the current markets and platform beyond that. Bear case, about $0.30 per share. Earnings fall back to roughly $0.30 per share (about one third of 2025) and fade over 15 years. Named pressures: heavy platform spending that has already consumed most of operating cash flow, about $2.75 million a year of lease repayments that sit outside operating cash flow, and stock compensation of about $4 million a year. On top of that the company owes roughly $17 million of loans (about $10.6 million due within a year) and about $17.5 million of deferred purchase payments to MeridianBet's former owners, together about $2.7 per share, which is most of what the bear-case earnings are worth. Repeated goodwill write-downs also show that past acquisitions did not earn what was paid. Bull case, about $13.50 per share. Earnings grow about 5% a year for eight years, in line with the market-by-market expansion of the past two years and the 2026 first-quarter revenue pace, then hold flat for a decade or more before fading. What we did not include: new-country launches not yet licensed, margin gains from platform integration, and any assumption that recent revenue growth continues. What could prove this wrong. Gaming licences and tax rates in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia, Latin America and Africa can change, and revenue is spread over many small regulated markets. The company received a Nasdaq minimum-bid notice in late 2025 and regained compliance after the reverse split in March 2026, but it cannot do another reverse split for a year. Because we value from cash flow that already has interest deducted, no separate debt subtraction is made in the base case; the debt and deferred payments matter in the bear case. The margin-of-safety price is around $3.00 per share, roughly a 65% discount to the base case, because this is a small, foreign-regulated, recently combined company with a short record and meaningful obligations, and it applies only if operating cash flow holds up and those obligations are being paid from it.