Keywords Studios has acquired Global Video-Games Services Inc. (GVGS) together with its subsidiary companies including its principal trading entity, Enzyme Testing Labs Inc. from its founders, Yan Cyr and Emmanuel Viau and Fonds d’Investissement de la Culture et des Communications (FICC).
Keywords Studios is paying the sellers and settling the financing obligations of FICC to a total of CAD$5.4m. This is being satisfied by the payment of CAD$4.9m in cash to the Sellers and CAD$0.5m to FICC in repayment of loans advanced to GVGS.
Enzyme was founded in 2002. The consolidated, audited accounts for the year to 31 December 2015 show revenue of CAD$11.5m and profit before interest and tax of CAD$1.3m. Net assets at closing after adjusting for the loans being repaid are estimated to be CAD$2.3m.
Based in Montreal and St-Jérôme (60 km from Montreal) and with an office in Kawasaki near Tokyo, Enzyme’s strengths are in Functional and Localisation Testing of video games for leading game publishers and developers. In addition, it provides Localisation Services and Focus Group Testing; the latter fitting well with Keywords’ recently acquired Player Research. Combining Enzyme with Keywords will significantly increase Keywords’ Functional Testing capacity (which accounted for 8% of Group revenue in the first half of 2016) and provide significant operational synergies within the Group. The business will be integrated into Keywords during the course of 2017 and we anticipate the resulting synergies will deliver significant margin improvement.
Andrew Day, Chief Executive of Keywords Studios, commented: “The acquisition of Enzyme brings together two of the leading video games testing providers, reinforcing Keywords’ position as the market leader in the field, with testing operations in Montreal, St-Jérôme, Seattle, Tokyo, Singapore, New Delhi, Milan and Dublin.”
Ireland, Dublin & Canada, Montreal
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