By Josh White
Date: Thursday 17 Dec 2020
LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Video games technical and creative services provider Keywords Studios announced the acquisitions of Indigo Pearl and Jinglebell Communications on Thursday.
The AIM-traded firm said the acquisitions would further its strategy to become the "go-to" technical and creative services platform for the global video games industry.
It said Indigo Pearl, led by Caroline Miller and founded in 2000, is a full service public relations (PR) agency specialising in the video game sector.
Based in London, its 10-person team covered traditional as well as social media and influencer-driven campaigns.
The company also provided technology-enabled asset management solutions through its 'PXN' and 'DXN' digital platforms, to ensure fully audited access to its clients' marketing and PR materials for consumer and trade press and influencer-based communications.
Indigo Pearl's clients included Epic Games, Google Stadia, Devolver Digital, Sony PlayStation, Ubisoft Entertainment and Niantic.
For the 2020 calendar year, Indigo Pearl was expecting to generate revenue of £1.8m and adjusted EBITDA of £0.28m.
Under the terms of the acquisition, Keywords Studios said it would pay initial consideration of £1.1m in cash and the equivalent of £0.5m in new shares on the first anniversary of completion, and would then be subject to orderly market provisions for a further year.
Deferred consideration of up to £0.4m in cash would be paid to the seller three years from completion, subject to certain conditions being met.
Jinglebell, meanwhile, was founded in 1981 by Carlo Forester and is based in Milan, and was described by Keywords as a boutique recording studio that provided audio recording, music production and sound design for video games and advertisements.
Its team of 18 staff delivered "thousands" of audio files every year for leading game publishers such as Activision, Electronic Arts, Sega, Square Enix, as well as major companies such as Barilla, L'Oreal, Vodafone and Nestlé.
Jinglebell was expected to produce revenue of €2.1m and EBITDA of €0.1m for the year ending 31 December, and under the terms of the acquisition, Keywords was paying cash consideration of €1.5m and the equivalent of €0.3m in new ordinary shares on the first anniversary of completion, which would then be subject to orderly market provisions for a further year .
""We look forward to working with the highly experienced and creative teams at Jinglebell and Indigo Pearl, supporting their growth and building further on our reputation as the leading provider of highly specialised video games services around the world," said chief executive officer Andrew Day.
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