Keywords Studios makes three acquisitions for €11.2m

Dublin-headquartered gaming company Keywords Studios has made three acquisitions, investing €11.2 million for the companies.

Keywords, which provides technical and creative services to the global video games industry, said the acquisition of machine translation technology company Kantan, marketing services company Ichi and audio recording studio Syllabes were in line with the group's strategy.

Kantan was acquired for a potential consideration of up to €7 million, with €3.5 million in cash and €2.9 million to be paid in cash and shares based upon performance targets for Kantan for the three years following completion.

The company develops automated translation technology and has its own neural network machine translation engines, KantanMT, and a global crowdsourcing translation platform, KantanSkynet. Among the companies using its services are eBay, VistaPrint and the European Commission.

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Acquisition

The company, which was founded by Tony O’Dowd, is based at Dublin City University’s ADAPT Centre and employs nine people. In the 12 months to March 31st, 2019, Kantan generated revenues of over €800,000.

The second acquisition, Ichi Holdings, is costing keywords £3.2 million (€3.7 million), with £2.24 million (€2.63 million) being paid in cash. The London-based company, which was founded in 2009, provides creative and marketing services to video game publishers, the sports sector and the entertainment industry. It employs 13 people.

For the 12 month period to June 30th, 2019, Ichi generated revenues of £2.9 million (€3.4 million).

Montreal-based Syllabes will bring audio recording and casting services to the Keywords group. The acquisition is costing Keywords up to 475,000 Canadian dollars (€324 million), with $350,000 (€238,000) in cash and $150,000 (€102,000) on completion of certain targets. The company generates more than $700,000 (€477,000) in revenue each year and has five staff.

Keywords, which was recently named Irish technology company of the year, has spent an estimated €233 million on acquiring 37 companies since 2014 to the end of October.