Hong Kong-based digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification giant Animoca Brands shared key unaudited financial and business highlights for fiscal year 2022.
The results include contributions from the Company’s key business units, including The Sandbox, GAMEE, nWay, Blowfish Studios, Grease Monkey Games, REVV Motorsport, TOWER, Quidd, Lympo, and Forj (formerly Bondly), in addition to Web3 service revenue arising from portfolio investments and partnerships.
Key financial highlights as of 31 December 2022 (non-IFRS measures)
- Bookings of A$594 million (approximately US$402 million) for the 12 months ending on 31 December 2022 (Note 1). This compares to total bookings of A$428 million (approximately US$291 million) for the prior 12 months ending on 31 December 2021. Bookings (Note 2) include token sales, NFT sales, and other non-blockchain activities.
- Cash and stablecoin balances of A$286 million (approximately US$191 million).
- Liquid digital assets of A$690 million (approximately US$469 million), which includes reserves of SAND, the utility token used in The Sandbox platform.
- Off-balance sheet token reserves for all other Animoca Brands majority-owned Web3 subsidiaries of A$2.4 billion (approximately US$1.6 billion). These reserves include the Animoca Brands tokens PROS, ASTRAFER, QUIDD, PRIMATE, REVV, TOWER, GMEE, and others.
- The minority investment portfolio of over 380 portfolio companies.
- The Company recently released 2020 audited financial statements and is working on completing 2021 audited financial statements.
Key business highlights
- Capital raises: In 2022, the Company announced both equity and convertible debt fundraising activities. The equity capital raise was in two tranches. The first was a total of US$358,888,888; the second was US$75,320,000. The convertible debt raise was US$110,000,000, bringing in new strategic investors. In addition, Animoca Brands expanded into Japan, launching Animoca Brands Japan and raising ¥1,100,000,000 (approximately US$10,000,000) of funding in its seed round in January 2022 and US$45,000,000 in August 2022.
- Acquisitions: Animoca Brands completed acquisitions of 6 companies during 2022, including Grease Monkey Games, a Melbourne-based developer of high-quality motorsports games; Life Beyond Studios (previously known as Darewise), a game developer founded by veterans of the AAA games industry; Notre Game, a game development and publishing company known for Scratch Wars; TinyTap, the leading ed-tech platform for user-generated educational games; Be. (previously known as Be Media), an Australian digital marketing agency focusing on key opportunities in Australia centered around blockchain development; and PIXELYNX, a music metaverse gaming platform founded by musicians and technologists deadmau5 (Joel Zimmerman) and Richie Hawtin (Plastikman) along with music and gaming industry veterans.
- New business line: In 2022, Animoca Brands launched a Web3 services business to advise Web2 and Web3 companies on implementing tokens and NFTs into their business models. Animoca Brands has accrued extensive experience in this area since 2018, having implemented tokens and NFTs in various of its own games and subsidiaries. The Company seeks to be the leading service provider for Web2 companies looking to expand into Web3 and for Web3 companies looking to improve the performance of their token and NFT projects. The Company’s Web3 services contributed approximately US$120 million of total bookings in 2022.
- New leadership: Animoca Brands appointed several new personnel to senior management positions in 2022, including Alan Lau as chief business officer, Minh Do as co-chief operating officer, Jared Shaw as chief financial officer, Jamii Quoc as head of legal-commercial and M&A (promoted to deputy general counsel in 2023), Josh Du as head of digital assets portfolio, and others.
- Major product developments: Phantom Galaxies, an open-world mech combat game developed by Animoca Brands’ subsidiary Blowfish Studios, raised US$19,300,000 from its heavily oversubscribed Planet Private Sale; subsidiary TinyTap launched and sold its first Publishers NFTs for 138.926 ETH (approximately US$228,000 at time of sale). Mocaverse, Animoca Brands’ official PFP NFT collection, was launched in December 2022 to strengthen Animoca Brands’ ecosystem of Web3 and metaverse-centric projects.
Animoca Brands will host an Investor Day in Sydney on 11 September 2023, starting at 9:45 a.m. (AEST).
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