Nexters, a publisher and developer of mobile games based in Russia, becomes a public company. It enters the market not through an IPO, but through a merger with the SPAC firm Kismet Acquisition One. After the transaction is completed in the second quarter of 2021, Nexters shares will be traded on the Nasdaq exchange.
The market value of Nexters after the merger with Kismet Acquisition One will be $1.9 billion. 92% of the company will remain at the disposal of the current shareholders of the company. The latter include Andrey Fadeev and Boris Herzovsky, founders of Nexters, as well as the Buchman brothers, owners of Playrix. Within a year after the completion of the transaction, all of them will be prohibited from selling their shares.
8% of the company will pass into the hands of Kismet Acquisition One even before the listing. It is headed by Ivan Tavrin, the former CEO of Megafon and the current owner of the media holding UTV Holding, whose assets include Disney Channel and Muz-TV. Tavrin is a long—time business partner of Alisher Usmanov, whose name is associated with Mail.Ru Group. In the new company, Tavrin will become a member of the board of directors.
The merger will cost Kismet Acquisition One $300 million previously raised. Half of the amount will go to “transform the company into a leading consolidating platform in the European mobile gaming.” The second half goes to the current shareholders of Nexters.
Nexters earned $318 million last year alone. The company’s management believes in further growth of its revenue. He plans to increase his annual earnings to $562 million by 2023. This should be facilitated by both the growing sales of Hero Wars and the release of new mobile titles. Now Nexters, founded in Russia in 2007, is a Cyprus company with its head office in Limassol.