AMPD Ventures Inc (CSE:AMPD, OTCQB:AMPDF) has said it is continuing to work towards the completion of the acquisition of a world-leading, profitable, animation and performance capture studio, first announced on January 5, 2023.
The company said it believes that the target provides significant synergistic benefits with Departure Lounge and technology know-how developed to date and that the target company's long-term, proven track record of success with some of the largest players in the industry will put the group on a sustainable path of profitability.
As announced, the acquisition is expected to be funded through long-term low-cost bank debt and shares, at terms that management believes are beneficial to shareholders.
In a statement, Anthony Brown, interim CEO at AMPD Ventures commented: "The acquisition, as outlined in the non-binding Letter of Intent (LOI) announced in January, would be transformative for the company,”
He added: "Combining the early successes of the Departure Lounge studio, such as the CIMA award-winning Monstercat Music Video, ‘The Dark’, with a studio that has a decade-long track record of successful film, television, and video game projects, helps bring our next-generation content creation technology to the industry with a company that has a long-term, proven track record of success."
In light of the reorganization, and to further reduce the AMPD group's monthly cash burn, the company said its subsidiary, AMPD Technologies Inc has made a voluntary assignment into bankruptcy under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada).
AMPD Ventures said its board of directors has determined that bankruptcy is in the best interests of AMPD Technologies and its stakeholders. This process, which will help AMPD Ventures focus on areas where growth is strongest, is not expected to directly impact AMPD Ventures' relationships with its creditors or other counterparties.
AMPD Ventures maintains certain important vendor relationships, such as the Cloud Service Provider (CSP) partnership with NVIDIA, which has seen massive recent increases in value due to its focus on artificial intelligence-based computing solutions, including for the creative industries.
The company plans to embrace a full range of generative AI solutions as it continues to develop its offerings for digital content creation studios and services. AMPD Ventures seeks to have certain contracts underlying these partnerships assigned from AMPD Technologies to AMPD Ventures.
"While we believe that the underpinning computing required for digital content creation studios like Departure Lounge is a key differentiator for AMPD Ventures, we must focus on building cutting edge, multi-technology studios and the pipeline of customers interested in building new virtual production facilities such as the announced Bangkok Thailand facility being built for Cloud 11 with the services of AMPD," said Brown.
AMPD Ventures is focused on building the world's best suite of tools and technologies for digital content creation and distribution, enabling companies to enter the next era of the internet through its global leading Metastage facility.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com