Israeli mobile gaming company Playtika has filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) on Nasadaq. The filing says that Playtika aims to raise $100 million but the figure could be revised upwards prior to the offering. No share price was indicated in the filing.
Playtika filed confidentially two months ago and at the time "Reuters" reported that Playtika would raise $1 billion at a company valuation of $10 billion.
Playtika says in the filing that the capital raised will be used to increase financial flexibility and general corporate purposes, potential acquisitions and repaying loans. At the end of the third quarter of 2020, Playtika owed $2.4 billion at annual interest of 7% to be repid by 2024.
Higher revenue of lower profit
Between January and September 2020, net profit fell 94% to $16.1 million due to a sharp rise in operational expenditure. The prospectus reveals, for example, that remuneration for the company's founder and CEO Robert Antokol rose to more than $336 million from $49 million in 2019 after the allocation of a generous capital remuneration of $310 million. Revenue between January and September 2020 was $1.8 billion, up 28.5% from the corresponding period of 2019.
Playtika was founded in 2010 by Antokol and Uri Shahak. It was acquired the following year by US company Caesars Interactive Entertainment for $130 million and acquired from them in 2016 by a Chinese consortium for $4.4 billion.
The company has more than 15 games and over 35 million players each month. Playtika has 3,700 employees including 850 in Israel.
Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse will act as lead bookrunners for the proposed offering. Citigroup, Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, UBS Investment Bank, and BofA Securities will act as additional bookrunners for the proposed offering. Baird, Cowen, Stifel, and Wedbush Securities will act as co-managers for the proposed offering. The company will trade under the ticker PLTK.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on December 20, 2020
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2020