Keywords to acquire Canadian games industry creative studio for £3.45m

Keywords Studios, a provider of technical services for the video games industry, is acquiring Canadian creative agency Sunny Side Up from its founder.

Announced this morning (December 21), the deal will see Québec-based Sunny Side Up Creative Inc join a growing network of game trailer and marketing studios that includes The TrailerFarm and Fire Without Smoke.

Sunny Side Up produces marketing assets for game publishers and developers, including trailers, art assets and motion graphics.

The firm was founded in 2012 by Thomas Giroux and today works with some of the biggest names in the industry, including EA, Eidos and Ubisoft. In the year to September 30 it generated an adjusted EBITDA of CAD$1.2m.

The acquisition will be made for CAD$5.9m (c£3.45m), with CAD$4.75m paid in cash on completion and the remaining CAD$1.15m through the issue of 60,179 new ordinary shares in Keywords Studios PLC.

The transaction is expected to complete on January 4 at the latest.

Keywords Studios chief exec Andrew Day said: “We are delighted to welcome Thomas and the talented Sunny Side Up team to the Keywords family.

“Following our acquisitions of Fire Without Smoke and The TrailerFarm, Sunny Side Up’s high quality game trailers, technical expertise and marketing service experience further extends the group’s geographic, client reach and scale in this relatively new and exciting area for Keywords.”

He added: “As part of the group, Sunny Side Up will be able to leverage our well established presence in Montreal and Quebec City to support its continued growth.”

Keywords Studios is headquartered in Dublin but operates studios around the world, including Cord, Liquid Violet, Fire Without Smoke and several others in London.

Fire Without Smoke was acquired earlier this year for £5.2m.

Mr Day continued: “We will as usual provide a fuller trading update by the end of January but, as we approach our year end, we expect adjusted profit before tax to be within the range of analyst forecasts at around €37m on revenues in the region of €250m (around €258m on a constant currency basis), which would represent increases of 61% and 65% on the prior year respectively.”