Next Games: Signs up to 16.5 Million USD co-development agreement - Nordea

Next Games has signed a co-development agreement on a mobile game with “a significant, global media company”, which in our view could be Netflix. Total contract value is up to USD 16.5m to be paid over five years. We believe that this includes an upfront payment of some USD 3-4m for Q4 and that the rest will be spread out over the remaining contract period. The announcement leaves lots of unanswered questions as not much details are provided on the scope or the economics of the agreement, but we know that Next Games does retain the ownership of the game’s IP rights, so this is not a pure subcontracting deal. The game is developed on, and will run on, Next Games’ proprietary technology platform. Our initial take is that the contract provides a much needed source of revenue to cover costs for the coming years and based on our aforementioned assumptions it implies revenue upside of around 8-10% for our curre nt 2021 estimate (EUR 31.8m) and 4% upside for 2022-23 estimates.