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https://www.reuters.com/article/us-asmodee-m-a/board-game-company-asmodee-explores-sale-sources-idUSKBN1IA38V

(Reuters) - Asmodee Group, the French maker of board game Catan and distributor of Pokemon cards in parts of Europe, is exploring a sale that could value it at more than 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion), according to people familiar with the matter.

The Guyancourt, France-based company, owned by private equity firm Eurazeo SE (EURA.PA), has hired investment bankers to run a sale process, said the sources, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are confidential.

The company generates about 100 million euros in 12-month earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to one of the sources.


A spokesman for Eurazeo declined to comment, while Asmodee did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Since Eurazeo took over Asmodee in 2013 in a 143 million euro deal, Asmodee has been aggressively expanding beyond Europe and into the United States.

The best-known titles the company publishes or distributes include Catan, Ticket to Ride, Splendor, and the Star Wars: X-Wing board games.



Reporting by Harry Brumpton in New York and Pamela Barbaglia in London; Additional reporting by Martinne Geller in London; Editing by Dan Grebler




Interesting, but probably business pretty much as usual if it sells as a unit

They bought it for 143 million Euro.
Now they're able to sell for 1.5 billion.

No brainer for an investment firm.

Huh, Asmodee goes around buying up lots of other game companies, and now they themselves are up for sale.

100,000,000 euros. For all of Asmodee.

Guess X-Wing doesn't outsell 40k after all!

Dunno, would be interesting to see how much revenue X wing brings in for them.

GW's market cap is only £700m or so. Still space for X Wing to nerd it over the ceramite clad grim dark.

In 6 months, GW took £108,000,000. Asmodee, as a whole, did €100,000,000 in 12 months.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In 6 months, GW took £108,000,000. Asmodee, as a whole, did €100,000,000 in 12 months.

Wheres that £108m figure from? Seems a huge figure, even at GW prices.

Theire 6m report, 2017.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
100,000,000 euros. For all of Asmodee.

Guess X-Wing doesn't outsell 40k after all!

it did, problem being FFG got a bit complacent and the game got over-muddled with lots of messy rules bodges, GW had already achieved that with 7th, 40k was on a bit of a downtick during X-Wings first few years which obviously helped, then GW promised not to do it again and that 8th would be all new mistakes, which seems to have pulled back a lot of the lapsed, it'll be interesting to see how it goes once the codex cycle is done

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Guess X-Wing doesn't outsell 40k after all!

Still does in the US.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
100,000,000 euros. For all of Asmodee.

Guess X-Wing doesn't outsell 40k after all!

I don't think that number is Asmodee's full revenue. It says differently here (in German):
https://www.spielen.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=392198 mentions that Asmodee increase revenue in 2017 by 17% and references 2016 numbers for that.
https://www.spielen.de/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=390068 which mentions 2016 numbers as 377,2 million Euro

377,2 million Euro (2016) + 64,12 Euro (17%) = 441,32 Euro for 2017. As a whole Asmodee has higher revenue than GW.

Asmodee revenue in 2016 (direct link to the PDF from the second link above): https://www.eurazeo.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Eurazeo-FY2016-results3.pdf

In 2016, Asmodee posted revenue of €377.2 million, up +39.5% on a reported basis compared to the previous year, and solid organic growth of +18.5% at constant scope and exchange rates.

The first site also has a link to the 2017 PDF with the 17%.

Somebody who's good with financial data and knows what they are talking about can probably correct any mistakes I made (the linked PDFs are in english).

IIRC, revenue is the total income; the 100 million Euros mentioned in the OP is the EBITDA - Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization - i.e gross profit. The report you quote gives 2016's EBITDA figure as 78 million Euros.

If GW's revenue is £100 million, Asmodee brought in over three times as much money.

Oops!

Seems fairly typical.

Anyway, I wonder what - if anything - this would actually mean to us gamers?

Some consolidation?

Some things go away, or are sold off - again?

By far Asmodee's biggest earner is the Pokemon trading card game. It is the only product that gets regular mentions in Eurazeo's financial reports.
I wonder if they can keep all the properties if they are sold. Will Asmodee start to collapse into its different parts again?
Any Disney license is notoriously expensive to maintain.
A purchasing company could decide it is not worth maintaining the Star wars license especially if X-Wing 2 and Star wars legions fail to take off.

Yup, the financial reports demonstrate that Asmodee is larger than GW by an order of magnitude. How much of Asmodee's sales are X-Wing and how much of GW's are 40k though is still unknown.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
IIRC, revenue is the total income; the 100 million Euros mentioned in the OP is the EBITDA - Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization - i.e gross profit. The report you quote gives 2016's EBITDA figure as 78 million Euros.

If GW's revenue is £100 million, Asmodee brought in over three times as much money.

Ahhh, fair enough Thank you for the clarification.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Guess X-Wing doesn't outsell 40k after all!

Still does in the US.

Not true anymore they have been hemorrhaging customers. Maybe the 2.0 knee jerk move can save it. There as really only a year where xwing was the most distributed games by sales and that was where 40k didn’t have much released and xwing had like 4 waves in its prime.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
IIRC, revenue is the total income; the 100 million Euros mentioned in the OP is the EBITDA - Earnings Before Interest, Tax, Depreciation and Amortization - i.e gross profit. The report you quote gives 2016's EBITDA figure as 78 million Euros.

If GW's revenue is £100 million, Asmodee brought in over three times as much money.

Ahhh, fair enough Thank you for the clarification.

I guess 40K isn't bigger than X-Wing after all....
(Just because of your previous dig. Odds are that GW does sell more than X-Wing, most of the time.)

The Auld Grump