Andrew was speaking on the M&A panel followed by a presentation of the industry research prepared by Andrew, Enter Capital’s team, and Sam Carlisle, Senior Director, Partner Relations of Xbox Studios (Microsoft).

Andrew Ponomar was invited to present at the XDS in Vancouver organized by Electronic Arts and the Advisory Board of XDS. The panel consisted of the notable industry experts including Andrew Ponomar, CEO of Enter Capital, Andrew Brown Chief Marketing Officer of KWS, Gilles Langourieux, CEO of Virtuos, Laurent Lugbull, Category Manager – Outsourcing & External Development at Ubisoft, Ron Ashtiani, founder of Atomhawk (acquired by Sumo Digital).

Andrew and Sam discussed the most recent trends and presented the research highlighting the merger and acquisition activities over the last decade. Sam brought his attention to a slight decrease in the number of acquisitions, while the volume of each individual transaction keeps growing.

According to Andrew, we should see the growing number of acquisitions in the next couple of years in the external game development sector. It is mainly driven by the market conjuncture and how the market share is distributed between major players. Some adverse effects of macro-economic conditions might turn the trends around.

“If you are considering selling your company, probably next 12 months are a good time span” – Andrew sees that multiples are high now, and sufficient liquidity on the market makes the conditions favorable for a seller.

Based on the presented research, there is a gap between a leading acquirer – KWS (Ireland) who closed over 40 transactions since 2014, including one of the largest acquisitions of Sperasoft (the transaction represented by Enter Capital team) and Goodbye Kansas and Sumo Digital following KWS with 4 and 3 deals respectively. The gap has the potential to shrink if other acquirers in the game development space will participate in market consolidation as it was the case in the IT software development industry.

Many other important industry topics were discussed during the 3-day conference on one-on-one meetings and business lunches. The External Development Summit (XDS) is an annual, international games industry event with attendees representing 45 countries. Enter Capital team is thrilled to be a leading M&A advisory firm in the external development space.

Enter Capital Team
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