Fusion Corporate Partners

Keywords Studios, a technical services provider to the video games industry, has acquires La Marque Rose SARL, Asrec SAS and the subsidiary companies of holding company, Dune Media SAS, trading as Dune Sound and Around the Word, which are all based in Paris and provide audio recording and localisation services to the video games industry internationally.

The businesses being acquired have combined annual revenues of €9.0 million and profit before tax of €0.9 million. The total aggregate consideration payable is €6.6 million on day one and up to a further €1.0 million over the two years to 31 December 2019, based on meeting performance targets for the combined businesses. Of the total aggregate consideration of up to €7.6 million, up to €6.7 million is in cash, and the remainder through the issue of 75,796 new ordinary shares in Keywords. Of this total, 9,534 new shares will be issued on day one (and are subject to a 12 month hard lock-in) and the balance will be issued on the first anniversary of completion.

Keywords intends to integrate La Marque Rose, Dune Sound, Around the Word and Asrec with their existing recording studio in Paris (acquired as part of the Synthesis acquisition in April 2016).  The scale of the combined operation will support an investment of around €1m in new audio recording studios and offices that will accommodate all 50 employees in a single location.

All but one of the six founders and shareholders will remain in the businesses with Michel Golgevit, founder of Dune being appointed as CEO of the combined companies.

La Marque Rose, founded in 1989, provides expertise in translation, project management and voice direction – from video game localization to dubbing of TV shows, trailers and ads. Established in 1998, Dune Sound (audio recording) and Around the Word (game localisation), which also has a small presence in Germany and in Canada, are together the largest providers of French language video game localisation.  Asrec started in 2010 and has been providing Keywords, Synthesis and Binari Sonori with French audio recording for the past four years.

Fulvio Sioli, European Managing Director of Keywords Studios, commented:

“These acquisitions are an important milestone in the development of our Localisation and Audio Services business lines in Europe. While the trend for game developers and publishers to increasingly source all languages from a single provider is clear, some clients continue to want to transact separately for individual languages. This is still most prevalent for those regarded as pillar languages of which French is probably still the most important.  The combination of La Marque Rose, Dune Sound, Around the Word and Asrec with our existing Keywords studio, gives us a leading share of this games production work.

Ireland, Dublin & France, Paris