Swedish investment holding company in esports and gaming Modern Times Group MTG AB has acquired the New Zealand-based mobile games developer and publisher Ninja Kiwi Ltd (Ninja Kiwi).
The up-front consideration amounts to approximately SEK 1,217 million (NZ$ 203 million) and earn-out payments at an expected value of SEK 406 million (NZ$ 68 million) in aggregate, including cash and share components.
The negotiations were disclosed earlier on 14 January 2021.
Ninja Kiwi broadens MTG’s gaming vertical to cover a new gaming genre, tower defense strategy games, with a total of approximately 140 million downloads to date and 6.2 million monthly active users. After completing the acquisition, MTG holds strong positions in the city building and strategy genres through InnoGames, mobile racing through Hutch, idle games through Kongregate and tower defense through Ninja Kiwi.
Ninja Kiwi is a mobile and online video game developer founded in Auckland, New Zealand, in 2006 by brothers Chris and Stephen Harris. The company has a diversified games portfolio consisting of over 25 premium and free-to-play games which the company has managed to innovate by building and improving games around the all-star IP Bloons.
The company is a highly profitable market leader in the tower defense genre, with gross revenues in 2020 amounting to SEK 337 million (NZ$ 56 million) and an adjusted EBITDA of SEK 168 million (NZ$ 28 million). Revenues come from both purchase of the games, and in-game purchases.
MTG’s Group President and CEO Maria Redin said “Ninja Kiwi has popularized the entire genre of tower defense games, and continues to pioneer it. Its evergreen Bloons IP and gaming platform has introduced millions to the tower defense genre, combining puzzle and strategy elements in games developed mainly for mobile platforms.”
”The strong organic traffic to Ninja Kiwi’s portfolio of games is hugely impressive, as is the company’s successful combination of paid and in-app purchase models in its pricing structure - both are testament to the quality of the titles that Ninja Kiwi has created. We’re very pleased that Ninja Kiwi is joining MTG and our growing gaming vertical, further broadening our offering through the introduction of a new genre,” she added.
Founded in 2006 by brothers Chris and Stephen Harris, Ninja Kiwi’s success has been built around a passion for gaming, which in turn helped create a strategy gaming subgenre. While it’s generally agreed that the first tower defense game was available for Atari in 1990, Ninja Kiwi can boast that they developed and launched one of the first commercially successful tower defense games in 2007, when they launched the first Bloons TD game.
Tower defense is a genre within strategy and puzzle games, in which players eliminate waves of enemies by building defense towers. The number of enemies increases with each wave of attacks on the tower defense; defeated enemies yield cash or other resources necessary for the player to build new towers in strategic locations, with different towers often having unique and specific abilities. Towers can be upgraded by players for collected resources, through spending of in-game resources or through in-game purchases.
Ninja Kiwi today has over 70 employees working for the company from the headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand and their offices in Dundee, Scotland.
Over the 14 years since Bloons was originally launched, it has become an incredible success with each sequel becoming more successful than the last one. Today, Bloons functions more like a platform, with a number of successful titles existing within the Bloons universe. Ninja Kiwi’s games have been downloaded approximately 140 million times to date, with a total of more than 1.1 million daily active users and 6.2 million monthly active users. Bloons is available to download on all major mobile platforms, as well as on Steam and MTG’s gaming vertical company Kongregate's platform.
