Mobile gaming company Playtika moves to go public in the US

Mobile game publisher Playtika on Friday announced it has filed for an initial public offering (IPO). The Israel-based company confidentially submitted a draft registration statement on Form S-1 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The number of shares to be offered and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined, and the initial public offering is expected to take place after the SEC completes its review process, subject to market and other conditions, according to a press release by Playtika Holding Corp.

Playtika has been working toward going public since last year. Gaming stocks are riding high now, mostly because people are playing more games during the pandemic, and several companies are lining up to take advantage of the moment.

CEO Robert Antokol founded Playtika as a social casino game company a decade ago, VentureBeat reports. Caesars Interactive Entertainment acquired Playtika in 2011 but sold it to a consortium of Chinese game companies for $4.4 billion five years later. At that time, Playtika had more than 2,800 employees, but additional deals have expanded the staff to over 4,000 people. Playtika has now acquired more than 15 companies.

Playtika is owned by Alpha Frontier, a consortium of investors that includes Giant chair Shu Yuzhu. In fact, Giant has tried to acquire the company, but without success. Among Playtika’s acquisitions are Germany’s Wooga, Austria’s Supertreat, and Finland’s Seriously. The company’s studios are spread across 19 offices, and it operates 20 different games, all of them free-to-play titles that get frequent updates, known as live operations. Playtika counts more than 35 million players who come back to its games every month — and 12 million who come back daily.

Public offerings for game companies generated $9.2 billion in value in the first nine months of 2020, according to game investment tracking firm InvestGame. While the stock market took some dives early in the year, the market started to recover in June, with multiple companies going public in Asia.