Following the sales of Saber Interactive (to a new company founded by Saber CEO Matthew Karch) and Gearbox Software (to Take-Two), the Embracer Group held an investors call to confirm the end of its dreaded restructuring program.
As you might remember, it all started when a $2 billion ‘transformative’ licensing deal (reportedly with the Savvy Games Group) fell through at the last minute, causing the Embracer Group stock to crash and forcing the company into a restructuring program that caused the closure of various studios (chiefly Volition), widespread layoffs, and the aforementioned sales.
In the investors call that directly followed the announcement of the Gearbox deal, CEO Lars Wingefors announced the end of the restructuring program and said there wouldn’t be other sales of internal assets.
We are ending the restructuring program now at the end of March, and the Gearbox restructuring process has been part of that program. Now we are getting approached, I would say not quite daily, but on a weekly basis, by companies that would like to acquire certain assets within the group. And I’ve been very clear that they’re not for sale because they’re a very important part of the group and the shareholders of the group going forward.
That doesn’t mean Embracer is restarting its previous habit of acquiring companies. Wingefors said it’s too soon to talk about that (and some may consider that a blessing, given that the company clearly overextended itself):
Looking to do more mergers and acquisitions deals, I think it’s way too early to start talking about restarting the M&A engines again.
The focus at Embracer is, instead, simply on making better games going forward.
Now we are in the late phases of the consideration of the future of the group, and that’s our highest focus and priority – how we set up and structure ourselves, utilize the assets we have within the group, and have them work together, and how we leverage them better working together, utilizing different functions, I think that’s our focus right now, to increase profitability and cashflow generation, by simply making better products and games.
News Source: Rock, Paper, Shotgun
