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Being Tipped in the Mail as a good 2020 prospect has given this a little boost.
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/SUMO/block-listing-update-2ixdw8rlqss6wqg.html
https://www.lse.co.uk/rns/SUMO/holdings-in-company-5sjd5gb6sxtikf7.html
Ticking a long nicely here...good growth potential here...
Fantastic news this morning....with a big player like tencent on board is massive news for us looking forward to the future here......
Sumo Group's businesses provide acclaimed development and design services to the video games and entertainment industries from studios in the UK, India, and Canada.
Sumo Digital, as the group's primary business, is one of the UK's largest independent developers of AAA-rated video games, having studios in Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham, Brighton, Leeds, Leamington Spa, Warrington and Pune, India. The business has acquired two studios since IPO, which operate under their own names, BAFTA award-winning The Chinese Room and Red Kite Games. Sumo Digital provides turnkey and co-development solutions to a global blue-chip client base.
Atomhawk is a multi-award-winning visual design company, with studios in Newcastle and in Vancouver (Canada), servicing the games, film and visual effects industries.
Together, the Group delivers full-spectrum visual and development solutions, which include initial visual concepts, conceiving new products and game development involving all aspects of pre-production, production & development, as well as supporting games as a service.
Steven Ma, Head of Tencent Games, said, "We are glad to invest in Sumo Group, a leading independent co-development studio. We look forward to supporting Sumo's growth and exploring collaborations with the Company to bring more interactive entertainment experiences to global audiences."
Tencent connects hundreds of millions of Internet users every day. It operates communications and social platforms, digital content (including online games, video, literature, music, and media), payment and cloud businesses. Tencent is the world's largest game developer and publisher by revenue. It has invested in several innovative and successful game developers and publishers globally.
The Company announces that Tencent Holdings Limited (through a direct wholly owned subsidiary) ("Tencent") and Perwyn Bidco (UK) Limited ("Perwyn") have notified the Company that they have entered into an agreement for the acquisition by Tencent from Perwyn of 15,000,000 shares in the Company.
Tencent is one of the world's leading internet companies. Following the acquisition of these shares from Perwyn, Tencent will hold a 9.96% interest in the Company.
The shares are being acquired by Tencent from Perwyn, an evergreen, family-funded private equity business and investor in Sumo Group since September 2016. Following the sale of these shares, Perwyn will retain a 17.38% interest in the Company.
Carl Cavers, Chief Executive Officer of Sumo Group, said: "We are delighted that Tencent have chosen to acquire a shareholding in the Company, and we look forward to working with Tencent to explore co-development opportunities. When Perwyn invested in Sumo Digital in September 2016 we were a private company with annual revenue of around £24m and operated from three studios in two countries. We are now a public company and, following the recent announcement of our new studio in Warrington in the north west of England, now have ten studios in three countries and reported revenue of more than £38m for the year ended 31 December 2018. I would like to thank Perwyn, once again, for their original investment and for their ongoing support of the business."
New personnel ....been driven by strong forecasted growth it is also keeping the gene count strong..
See our head count is up to 700 plus..
Haven't posted here much lately....but happy with my investment here...profits and turnover up again.......
Nice 39k buy from yesterday turned up......somebody is very confident...............................................
some decent enough buys coming in today.......
Great future for this little gem..
Another cracking day
Reported results
2018
2017
Change
Revenue
£38.7m
£28.6m
35.3%
Gross profit
£18.4m
£13.3m
38.9%
Gross margin
47.6%
46.4%
Loss before taxation6
(£0.5m)
(£28.0m)
Cash flow from operations
(£6.4m)
£3.3m
Net cash
£3.7m
£12.4m
Basic and diluted loss per share
(0.20p)
(389.4p)
Underlying results
2018
2017
Change
Adjusted revenue 1
£38.9m
£28.6m
35.9%
Adjusted gross profit2
£18.8m
£13.3m
41.7%
Adjusted gross margin excluding royalties3
47.6%
45.4%
Adjusted EBITDA4
£10.4m
£8.4m
24.6%
Adjusted profit before tax5
£9.0m
£7.5m
20.2%
Carl Cavers, Chief Executive Officer of Sumo Group, said:
"With the video games market forecast by Newzoo, a leader in games analytics, to grow around 30% in the next three years, driven by demand for new cloud-based subscription platform content supported by the world's biggest publishers, we believe that the outlook for Sumo Group is as good as ever. We are successfully attracting major new global publishers, as well as strengthening our relationships with existing and previous clients, and our business development pipeline remains very healthy.
"The challenge for the business is the acquisition of talent to support and deliver on these significant growth opportunities. Our quest to attract talented people to the business, both organically and through acquisition, is delivering results and we will maintain a keen focus on this aspect of the business in 2019. Having acquired Red Kite Games at the beginning of the new financial year, we are continuing to explore further interesting acquisition opportunities.
"We have had a positive start to the new financial year and have an unusually high degree of earnings visibility with slightly over 88% of Sumo Digital's forecast 2019 development fees being already contracted or near contracted. Current trading is in line with the management's expectations and I remain confident that the business will continue to deliver in 2019 and beyond.
All confirmed games coming to Apple Arcade. Apple showed off a variety of games that will be coming to the service in a trailer.
Here's the list of all games shown off above:
Little Orpheus by Sumo Digital/The Chinese Room
https://www.dexerto.com/gaming/apple-arcade-gaming-service-announcement-487017
Morning all...very quite hear at present.
Sumo Group's brokers in order to maintain an orderly market.
Carl Cavers, Chief Executive Officer of Sumo Group, said:
"Red Kite is an established brand with talented people, providing engineering and code support services to some of the biggest names in the industry. Simon and his team are already well known to us and we are confident that Red Kite will integrate quickly and successfully. On behalf of the whole Group, I extend a warm welcome."
Simon Iwaniszak, Studio Director of Red Kite, added:
"We are very much looking forward to being part of Sumo Group. Sumo Digital is such an exciting business, working on incredible projects. Being part of a creative, ambitious and supportive Group, which is delivering great results, will present new opportunities and new challenges to Red Kite. We have exciting plans for the studio and believe that Sumo Group will help us to achieve our full potential."
Sumo Group, the award-winning provider of creative and development services to the video games and entertainment industries, is pleased to announce that yesterday the Group completed the acquisition of Red Kite Games Limited ("Red Kite"), a work-for-hire studio focusing on engineering and code support services, for a total consideration of circa £2.0 million. The net consideration is circa £1.5 million, as Red Kite has been acquired with circa £0.5 million of cash on the balance sheet.
The acquisition supports the Group's growth strategy through increased capacity and access to a new talent pool in West Yorkshire.
Background
Red Kite is well known to the Group: Sumo Digital has worked successfully with Red Kite for several years, collaborating on a range of titles. Sumo Digital has in the last 12 months accounted for around 40% of Red Kite's sales with the other 60% coming from projects that are not publicly disclosed.
Established by ex-Rockstar Games developer Simon Iwaniszak in 2012, Red Kite is primarily a work-for-hire studio, providing game development services and code solutions to the video games industry. The business operates from a single studio in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, employing 27 people. Its talented and highly experienced development team works with some of the industry's best-known publishers and developers, most recently Codemasters on DiRT 4, Sony Computer Entertainment (SCE) on God of War III: Remastered and Activision on Call of Duty: Strike Team.
The share capital of Red Kite was owned by certain of its Directors and employees, including the company's founder Simon Iwaniszak.
Integration
Simon Iwaniszak, David Roberts and Andrew Greensmith, three of Red Kite's former shareholders, have entered into new service agreements and will be issued with options over Sumo Group shares under the Company's Long-Term Incentive Plan.
The business will continue to operate under the Red Kite name, as a wholly owned subsidiary of Sumo Digital.
Financials
In the year ended 31 January 2018, Red Kite reported EBITDA of £0.4m on revenue of £0.9m. These figures are unaudited. Both revenue and profit are expected to be lower in the year to 31 January 2019, due to the application of resource on an own-IP project.
Red Kite is expected to contribute circa £0.2m to Sumo Group EBITDA in the 11 months to 31 December 2019.
Consideration and issue of equity
Under the terms of the acquisition, Sumo Group has paid an amount in cash equal to the cash held by Red Kite at completion (circa £0.5m) and will issue 1,162,791 new ordinary shares in Sumo Group on the first anniversary of completion (the "Consideration Shares") to the sellers with a value of £1.5m, calculated using the average closing share price for the three business days prior to completion of 129 pence.
The sellers have agreed that, for the period of 12 months from issue of the Consideration Shares, any sale will be subject to the approval o
About Sumo Group - www.sumogroupplc.com
Sumo Group's businesses provide acclaimed development and design services to the video games and entertainment industries from studios in the UK, India, and Canada.
Sumo Digital, as the group's primary business, is one of the UK's largest independent developers of AAA-rated video games, having studios in Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham, Pune (India), and the BAFTA award-winning The Chinese Room in Brighton. Sumo Digital provides turnkey and co-development solutions to a global blue-chip client base. Atomhawk is a multi-award-winning visual design company, with studios in Newcastle and in Vancouver (Canada), servicing the games, film and visual effects industries.
Together, the Group delivers full-spectrum visual and development solutions, which include initial visual concepts, conceiving new products and game development involving all aspects of pre-production, production & development, as well as supporting games as a service.
This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.
Sumo Group PLC
21 January 2019
21 January 2019
Sumo Group plc
("Sumo Group" or the "Group")
PRE-CLOSE TRADING UPDATE AND NOTICE OF RESULTS
FY2018 at least in line with management expectations
Sumo Group is pleased to announce that it expects to report results at least in line with management expectations for the financial year ended 31 December 2018 on Tuesday, 9 April 2019.
A number of contracts were secured towards the end of 2018, which underpin the financial forecasts for 2019. As at 31 December 2018, the Group had positive cash balances of £3.7m and employed 592 people, an increase of 103 from the figure at the previous year end.
Carl Cavers, Chief Executive Officer, said:
"In our first full year since IPO in December 2017, we have continued to deliver strong growth across all areas of the business. The Group started 2018 taking on the Newcastle Studio of CCP Games and, in August, we acquired The Chinese Room, creating our Brighton Studio. Sumo Group is currently operating globally from seven studios in three countries and we are planning to operate from another studio in the UK in the near future.
"We are seeing many exciting opportunities to deliver more growth in our core markets, served by Sumo Digital and Atomhawk, and I am very pleased with the progress the business is making. The Board looks forward to announcing the Group's Final Results and providing a further update in April."
Morning all and a happy new year.......
General lack of positive news I'd say. Likely to drift a bit lower over the next few months. Anyone know when the full year results are expected, March maybe ?