Technology

Posted on April 9, 2018 by staff

Keywords Studios makes two acquisitions as revenue soars

Technology

Keywords Studios, the AIM-listed provider of technical services to the global video games industry, has made two multimillion-pound acquisitions and revealed a 57 per cent surge in annual revenues.

The Irish-headquartered company has bought Cord Worldwide and Laced Music for a total of £4.5m from the Cutting Edge Group.

London-based Cord provides music-focused branding and strategic consulting services to the likes of Shell, BT and Lego and Laced is a music services firm and record label specialising within the video games industry.

The acquisitions are in line with Keywords’ plan to grow as it “selectively consolidates the highly fragmented market for video game services”, the group said in a statement on the London Stock Exchange.

Andrew Day, chief executive of Keywords Studios, added:  “Thus far, our audio service line has specialised entirely on voice over production for video games, yet video games publishers/developers are major buyers of specifically composed or licensed music for use in games, are increasingly focussed on using music assets as part of their brand or franchise identity and are becoming more sophisticated about how they buy and manage their music assets.

The company has also published its full-year financial results for the year to 31 December 2017, hailing “another excellent performance”.

Group revenue for the 12-month period soared by 57 per cent to €151.4m while adjusted profit before tax grew by 55 per cent to €23m.

Day said: “The group has delivered another strong performance with good organic growth supplemented by a number of acquisitions including two of our largest acquisitions to date.

“Our organic investment and acquisitions have added significant scale to our existing service lines and extended both our service range and geographical reach, establishing a new engineering service line, bringing additional capabilities in co-development, content management, and delivering services from within clients’ premises, and providing us with a presence in Eastern Europe.”

Keywords Studios was set up in 1998 and now has over 40 facilities in 20 countries across Asia, the Americas and Europe.

It provides integrated art creation, software engineering, testing, localisation, audio and customer care services across more than 50 languages and 16 games platforms to a blue-chip client base of approximately 650 clients across the globe.