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- Tencent plans to launch an offer to acquire all the shares of Norwegian game developer Funcom via its indirectly owned Dutch subsidiary, Tencent Cloud Europe B.V, valuing the company at 1.33B nkr NOK ($148M USD).
- Both the management and the supervisory boards of Funcom unanimously decided to recommend its shareholders to accept the offer by Tencent.
- In October 2019, Tencent made an initial investment in the developer and acquired a 29% stake in Funcom from KGJ Capital to become the company’s largest shareholder.
Today, Norwegian game developer Funcom’s management and supervisory boards issued a recommendation to its shareholders to accept a $148M offer to acquire all the shares of the company made by the Chinese conglomerate Tencent Holdings, which also owns large stakes in multiple developers, including Riot Games, Epic Games, Supercell, and Ubisoft.
In October 2019, Tencent took a 29% share of the developer by acquiring all shares belonging to Norway-based KGJ Capital. Funcom is mostly known as a developer specializing in online games such as open-world sandbox game Dune, fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) Age of Conan, and MMORPG Anarchy Online.
“We have had a great relationship with Tencent as our largest shareholder so far and we are excited about this opportunity. We will continue to develop great games that people all over the world will play, and we believe that the support of Tencent will take Funcom to the next level,” said Rui Casais, CEO and chairman of the management board of Funcom, in a release. “Tencent will provide Funcom with operational leverage and insights from its vast knowledge as the leading company in the game space.”
As Funcom is a publicly-traded company on the Oslo Børs (Oslo Stock Exchange) in Norway, Tencent Cloud Europe will seek to buy shares directly from all the other shareholders. Tencent is offering shareholders 17.00 nkr ($1.89) per share, which represents a premium of 27.3% to the closing price of the shares on Jan. 21. This offer values the total share capital of Funcom at 1.33B nkr ($147.84M) on a fully diluted basis. At the market’s closing time today, the share price of Funcom on the Oslo Stock Exchange increased 26.89% to 16.95 nkr, leveling out just below per share offering by Tencent.
