Animoca Brands Corporation Ltd (ASX:AB1) has entered into an agreement to acquire Quidd, Inc, a digital goods company that owns and operates a leading global marketplace for buying and selling digital collectibles.
Concurrently, Animoca has completed a strategic capital raise of $8 million in order to fund the advancement of various business opportunities, including the expansion of Quidd.
Notably, the $8 million was raised through the placement of shares at 20 cents, representing a 16% premium to the 30-day VWAP.
Quidd currently has the world’s largest assortment of digital collectibles licences and partnerships (over 325 individual brands), featuring top content owners across multiple verticals; partners include Disney, Marvel, HBO (Game of Thrones), CBS (Star Trek) and NBA, among others.
Happy 70th Birthday to the @NBA Let’s celebrate with @PaniniAmerica with stickers from some of your favorite teams that date back to the original 1949 merger that created the NBA ????:@ATLHawks@DetroitPistons@nyknicks@SacramentoKings https://t.co/QY1bi44BmI pic.twitter.com/NTO40PIpYg
— Quidd (@quidd) August 3, 2019
Quidd had an average of 208,000 monthly active users for the first half of 2019, with the majority of those users being in the US.
It has issued and sold over 2.1 billion individually-serialised digital collectables.
Strategic rationale
The acquisition of Quidd confers a powerful set of intellectual property (IP) and media relationships to Animoca and provides opportunities for expansion of the company’s virtual goods and digital collectibles strategy, adding over 325 of the best known IP in the world today including properties from Disney, Marvel, HBO, Cartoon Network, CBS, the NBA, and hundreds of others.
Acquiring Quidd will therefore significantly increase Animoca’s economic potential in the digital collectables sector via relationships with many of the world’s top content owners.
READ: Animoca Brands achieves positive operating cash flow with record receipts in June quarter
Quidd is currently available in English and not yet localised for other major markets.
Anicmoca will leverage its considerable global publishing expertise to localise Quidd for Asian markets followed by the rest of the world, significantly enlarging the potential audience reach.
The current management will continue to operate Quidd after the acquisition, working with Animoca to expand the Quidd business into international markets, leverage synergies and develop new business opportunities.
Acquisition terms
Animoca, via its wholly-owned subsidiary Animoca Brands Limited, will acquire from Michael Bramlage, co-founder of Quidd, and various non-founder shareholders 100% of the issued capital in Quidd, Inc., for an upfront consideration of US$5 million (about $7.2 million), payable in fully paid Animoca shares.
Additionally, Animoca will pay in shares to the seller's earn-out payments of up to US$3 million (about $4.3 million) on the basis of Quidd meeting net profit milestones over a three-year period.