Kingsisle bought by MGI

[Eric Stormbringer]

According to a press release that I am not sure that I can link under central rules- Kingsisle entertainment has been bought by the MGI group. More information can be acquired by searching google or visiting the MGI website directly.



Further Info
KI Blog Article on acquisition via @Sparck. Below are some important snippets of said article.



MGI Model per Website



MGI Press Release

KingsIsle was founded in 2005 and is a leading US game developer and publisher. It's flagship title is the Online PC Game Wizard101 while also its second game Pirate101 is doing well. The mobile IP rights of Wizard101 and Pirate101 are included in the Transaction, while further -loss making- mobile activities are excluded from the Transaction and will be continued by one of the founders. The global pandemic and larger game updates positively impacted KingsIsle's 2020 revenues and have been normalized to pre-Covid levels within the pro forma financials above for the valuation of the company. Wizard101 as well as Pirate101 currently almost exclusively generate revenues from the North-American market offering material European revenue growth potential to MGI. There will be further growth potential from launching the game on console as well as developing a mobile version for 2022 onwards.

UPCOMING PRESS CONFERENCE
MGI is holding a press conference going over their acquisition of KI at 11am Central European Time on Tuesday Jan 19th. Time zone conversion for US viewers are as follows:

5am ET(East Coast)
4am CT(Middle America)
2am PT(West Coast)

More information as well as a link to the actual stream can be found on MGI's twitter



MGI Press Conference Details

Interesting details from their press call. This was posted by someone on Twitter but I don't think I'm allowed to post a link.


Kingsisle Financial Highlights:
- W101 makes up 93% of KI revenue, P101 7%
- Membership makes up 31% of revenue, crowns 57%, bundles & misc. sales 11%
- 90% of revenue earned from US
- Target audience of W101 and P101 is approximately 20-35 year olds
- 51% of W101 revenue comes from players who have played for over 5 years
- 15% of new W101 players end up becoming paying users
- W101 has generated 375 million USD in revenue to date
- P101 has generated 25 million USD in revenue to date

In addition:


- MGI will be adding resources to Kingsisle in order to deliver on mobile and console ports, NOT using existing resources
- MGI expects game ports to come in 2022, not 2021
- MGI believes Pirate101 has potential "not used properly in the past"


So Pirate101 may be finally getting an update!

[Spellbinder]

Interesting

[masterofcatastrophe]

Also, some interesting financial information:

- Kingsisle is being acquired for 126 million USD, but up to 84 million extra will be payed out depending on Kingsisle's EBITDA. (Earnings before taxes)

- Kingsisle EBITDA between Jan 2020 and Sep 2020 was 12 million euros.

[Cosmos]

Well that's a development and a half. Doubt much of anything gamewise will change from this -- at least in the short term. On mobile at 2 am, but this looks to be MGI taking a big leap based on a totally non-professional skim of the deal numbers. With them being a public company, I would think that they would also be required to release their statements to the public like in the US? So we might finally get some transparency in that area. Hope it isn't more than they can chew.

[Jesse Strong]

$126m? I need more information on this i just check and their annuel revenue is $21.1m they taking over wiz nd pir101? In my opinion, 126m is too little i though their company was worth way more than that

[Eric Stormbringer]

$126m? I need more information on this i just check and their annuel revenue is $21.1m they taking over wiz nd pir101? In my opinion, 126m is too little i though their company was worth way more than that

It's 126 million with a potential 84 million more depending on KI's earnings before tax. So the total may well come up to close to 200 million.

[lethargy101]

Well I don't recall when I said it but I called it, KI were going to sell up. It's why the hard sell began. Let's hope the game has a long term future and maybe some better devs brought in. May MGI be good owners of our beloved game.

[Phenoixblizzard]

Guess I'll hold off on buying anything until I see how they run things. Hopefully they keep things the same way they've always been (and maybe bring back some older sales as well?), but who knows. I also wonder how this'll affect KI Live.

Hey @Sparck, any details on this you can give us on this?

[lethargy101]

Guess I'll hold off on buying anything until I see how they run things. Hopefully they keep things the same way they've always been (and maybe bring back some older sales as well?), but who knows. I also wonder how this'll affect KI Live.

Hey @Sparck, any details on this you can give us on this?

I would imagine KI live would remain the same since MGI bought KI not just Wiz.

[Phenoixblizzard]

I would imagine KI live would remain the same since MGI bought KI not just Wiz.

Fair point. It'll probably be the most frequently asked question for this month's KI Live I bet (unless they already had one this month? I can't remember if they combined a KI Live for last month and this due to holidays earlier this month or had it early last month, will check later when I'm more awake).