Team17 has just announced that they’ve got a “target list of studios” that they hope to acquire sometime in the near future. This comes following a reported jump in both revenue and profit that Team17 has been enjoying in the first half of 2019.
The main culprits of such a substantial financial growth for Team17 have been My Time at Portia and Hell Let Loose, though even smaller, more niche projects (Automachef, Monster Sanctuary) proliferated in this regard.
In Q1 and Q2 of 2019, Team17’s revenue jumped by a staggering 97% (£30.4 million), while gross profit is 119% up (£15.1 million). This accounts for a substantial 49.8% profit margin, which grew the company’s net cash for 2019 by £35.8 million.
Such a successful start of 2019 has prompted Team17 to start looking at studio acquisitions: “We will do what we believe is right. It’s really easy to spend money. Acquisitions are really easy, but good acquisitions are much harder. I grew up during the era of Infogrames and I saw a lot of bad acquisitions. What’s important is the right acquisitions that suit our business,” said Debbie Bestwich, Team17 CEO.
“We have a target list, and we’re looking at them in terms of studio acquisitions. Where it is quite interesting from that side is that they’re not just going to be on work-for-hire projects, but they’ll be working on new IP,” explained Bestwich, adding that the company is looking to invest in new intellectual properties as well.
Bestwich mentioned that Team17 isn’t afraid of signing up games that are outside of their comfort zone, such as Blasphemous and Hell Let Loose: “We are genre agnostic, and we’re not afraid of taking risk.”
As it stands, Team17 signs games from various independent studios, and then invest up to £1 million in each project, though the CEO was quick to note that the right project can get even more support than that.
As for their list of studio acquisitions, Team17 has been mum so far. We’re bound to see them making moves in the near future, however.
