Australian company Aristocrat Leisure Ltd. (ALL.AX) announced that it has acquired Israeli social gaming developer Plarium Global Limited for $500 million cash.
Headquartered in Herzliya, Plarium has over 1,200 employees worldwide and offices in Europe and the US. The Israeli company, founded in 2009, has nine key titles that are currently monetizing and a strong game pipeline. Plarium's most popular game to date, Vikings: War of Clans, has repeatedly ranked in the top 10 grossing strategy games since its launch.
Plarium CEO and cofounder Avraham Shalel will continue to lead Plarium after the acquisition. Shalel and 12 other key members of Plarium's management team have agreed to stay at the company and to defer part of the payments due them until 2020.
Shalel said, "I am very proud of the success we have achieved since establishing the business in 2009. The hard work and efforts of Plarium's employees have positioned Plarium as a world class mobile game publisher. Aristocrat is an ideal partner for us given our common aspiration to be a global leader in social gaming, which will be accelerated through leveraging Aristocrat's financial, strategic and operational resources."
Aristocrat CEO and managing director Trevor Croker said, "The acquisition of Plarium allows Aristocrat to expand our addressable market into logical adjacent segments in the fast growing mobile social gaming market. This immediately expands our addressable market from US$3.2 billion in the Social Casino segment, to US$25.4 billion when including the Strategy, Casual and RPG segments. It also provides us a stronger platform to target the US$43.6 billion overall mobile and web games market as growth segments."
The deal is due to be completed by December 2017.
Deutsche Bank is acting as financial advisor to Plarium and Goldfarb Seligman are legal advisors to Plarium. Citi is acting as the sole financial adviser to Aristocrat, and Allens and Herzog Fox & Neeman are its legal advisors.