Atari might be a household name in the gaming industry, but it's had a rough year. In fact, its finances are dire enough that the company's CEO has offered to step in and purchase it, an offer that Atari's board of directors have unanimously approved.
Last week, Atari released its financial results for the half-year ending in September. Those results paint a pretty grim picture; Atari's revenue is down 27% on last year, and its current operating income is down by 1.4 million euro as well. Atari puts this down to underperformance by its beleaguered VCS console, as well as "ICICB licensing contracts that have since been terminated".
It's worth noting here that although Atari points to increases in blockchain revenue during this period, that's a clever bit of accounting on the company's part. The aforementioned ICICB licensing contracts relate to the blockchain, so that drop in revenue is directly related to the "challenging market environment for cryptocurrencies in general" that Atari references. Although Atari points to an increase in blockchain revenues, it's pretty clear the company has actually been hit by crypto's fall in fortunes this year.
Results for the financial year ending in March 2022 weren't much better, either, suggesting that Atari has been in trouble for a while now. Those results were released in July, and they showed a drop of 21% on last year's revenue, with games and licensing being particularly affected. If Atari ever needed help, it's now (and at several other points in its history as well, arguably).
Well, that help may have arrived. According to a press release, Atari CEO Wade J. Rosen has offered to buy the company through his own firm Irata LLC. Rosen and Irata intend to "support Atari's development" with the offer, enabling the company to "benefit from new financing". The document makes reference to increasing economic uncertainty in gaming and blockchain tech, the latter of which Atari is very much interested in.
According to the offer, Rosen "does not intend to implement a squeeze-out procedure" (i.e. to force shareholders out of owning shares), so the listing of Atari's shares will be maintained. In October, Atari's board of directors approved this offer unanimously, and shareholders have until January 26th to decide whether or not they wish to take Rosen up on his offer.
If the shareholders agree, then the result of the offer will be announced on January 30th, after which point it will be settled in February. However, if Rosen doesn't have 50% or more Atari shares by January 26th, the offer will expire. Rosen already holds 29.19% of Atari's share capital, so he doesn't have to convince too many shareholders to cross that magic number. We'll bring you more on this as soon as we get it.
