Embracer Group Acquires 13 Companies

Embracer Group Announces the Acquisition of Thirteen Companies

Embracer Group, a video game holding company based in Sweden, recently made 13 new acquisitions. They’re comprised of six operative groups (subsidiaries) and now 46 game studios. Through these operative groups, Embracer has created an all-inclusive game development pipeline with each operative group working independently of each other.

From investing (Amplifier Game Invest), to indie publishing (DECA Games), to traditional publishing (Coffee Stain Holding, THQ Nordic, Koch Media), to game development (Saber Interactive), Embracer Group has it all. These recent additions are not directly linked to Embracer as a parent company but are rather acquisitions from its independent subsidiaries.

Embracer Group expects these acquisitions to account for roughly $98M-$120M (SEK 850M-1.05B) in additional sales through the fiscal year ending 31 March 2022. Interestingly, Embracer Group also expects the expanded studio footprint to bring savings on capitalized game development in the range of $5-10M and the combined EBIT and savings on game development to be in the range of $40-$60M (SEK 350-500M). These economies of scale would be impactful for a company generating ~$700M in revenue for the last twelve months with EBIT sitting at ~$64M over the same time period.

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Twitch Growth Accelerated during the pandemic

Playing video games was the hobby of choice for many during the stay at home orders caused by the pandemic. A beneficiary of that was Twitch, which allowed for people to watch video games when they couldn’t play. But, Twitch isn’t just for watching video games, it’s slowly becoming an agnostic way for people to watch anything live streamed. With this, we saw an uptick across not only gaming channels but also non-gaming channels. Here’s some of the best performers in both gaming and non-gaming since January in terms of average concurrent viewers:

Twitch Overall: +78% (1.35M in January to 2.40M in October)

Gaming:

• Minecraft: +166% (25,181 in January to 66,991 in October)
• League of Legends: +72% (134,031 in January to 230,989 in October)
• CS:GO: +72% (45,524 in January to 78,674
• Fortnite: +59% (72,339 in January to 115,178 in October)
  

Non-Gaming:

• Just Chatting: +130% (118,630 in January to 273,079 in October)
• Chess: +75% (3,298 in January to 5,781 in October)
• Slots: +31% (13,238 in January to 17,431 in October)
• Poker: +12% (5,570 in January to 6,291 in October)