tinyBuild Inc on Wednesday said its annual profit was up in line with rising revenue, while its operating chief has decided to resign with immediate effect to spend more time with his family.
Shares in tinyBuild were up 8.8% to 49.50 pence each in London on Wednesday morning.
The Washington, US-based indie games publisher said 2022 pretax profit was $15.9 million, up 27% from $12.5 million in 2021. Basic earnings per share was up 32% to 5.7 cents from 4.3 cents.
This was in line with revenue increasing 21% to £63.3 million from £52.2 million.
‘Last year was possibly the hardest test of our strategy and it validated the importance of investing in long-term, sustainable franchises and the people behind them. We faced unprecedented challenges, all while integrating acquisitions in different geographies and moving to a decentralised approach to keep the company agile at a larger scale,’ said Chief Executive Officer Alex Nichiporchik.
‘Our highly diversified portfolio of games continues to perform well as we push deeper into a wider variety of platforms and technologies. Our strong back catalogue performance supports an acceleration in organic investments while mergers and acquisitions multiples adapt to the changed environment. Finally, we see early signs of success of our cross-media product and we will continue to experiment with the aim to add additional revenue streams to our core business.’
Looking ahead, tinyBuild said its pipeline for 2023 and beyond is strong, including a number of larger budget games alongside continued investment in the catalogue, including updates, downloadable content and console launches.
As a result, it expects net cash to dip in the first half of 2023 but to improve in the second half to above $26.5 million at the year-end, excluding potential unannounced M&A.
Net cash at December 31 stood at $26.5 million, falling from $48.8 million due to investments in new video games.
‘The implication of the conflict in Ukraine and the evolving macroeconomic situation impose caution and vigilance and tinyBuild continues to carefully assess the position of its staff, its exposure in terms of revenues and any other factor that may have an impact on the business,’ tinyBuild said in a statement.
It added the board remains confident it is on track to deliver results at least in line with expectations, plus accretive acquisitions.
Also on Wednesday, tinyBuild said Chief Operating Officer Luke Burtis has decided to resign, effective immediately, in order to spend more time with his family. This was after taking paternity leave in 2022.
tinyBuild said his contributions to strategy and operations in the early years have been invaluable, while it does not currently intend to appoint a replacement.
This is because it has opted to distribute the responsibilities of the COO role among a wider group of decision-makers, as part of its strategy to move towards a more decentralised structure, announced in June last year.
Copyright 2023 Alliance News Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
