With almost all certainty, 2021 is going to be a record year for merger and acquisition activity in the U.S. During the first half of the year, M&A deal value during H1 was an all-time high at $1.27 trillion. That was an increase of a stunning 324 percent over the first half of 2020 and nearly matched the dollar value of deals for the full year 2020.
Leading the way in 2021 is the TMT (Technology, Media, and Telecom) sector with nearly 1,100 transactions valued at $473.2 billion in the first six months of the year. That blew away the next closest in volume (Industrials and Chemicals, 523 deals) and value (Pharma, Medical, and Biotech, $174.0 billion) while besting H1 2020 TMT deal value by about 6x.
The second half of the year is not showing signs of M&A activity slowing, with deals big and small being steadily inked. Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) is at all-time highs after saying it is buying Israeli applications-monitoring startup Epsagon for $500 million. Airtable, a privately owned maker of a no-code relational database, made its first-ever acquisition, buying visualization startup Bayes for an undisclosed amount.
Royal Wins Corporation (CSE: SKLL), a digital games studio pioneering casual real money competitive skill games on the mobile platform under the Kash Karnival brand. Royal made good on its promise last month to accelerate growth through acquisitions. On August 12, the Toronto-based company said that it signed a memorandum of understanding to acquire Las Vegas-based Antics Gaming LLC, a fellow developer of skill-based games for iOS and Android platforms.
The MOU will be followed by a definitive agreement this month that will spell out all the details of the transaction, which is anticipated to bring all of Antics’ intellectual property, patents, trademarks, and development team under the Royal Wins’ umbrella. Royal Wins will also assume all Antics working relationships with the likes of Samsung, Apple and leading mobile games platform Skillz (NYSE: SKLZ).
Royal Wins called the acquisition “the first in a series of expected acquisitions.”
Upon closing the deal, Antics Founder Becky Harris will serve as an advisor to Royal Wins, bringing a new level of oversight and networking to the company. Harris was previously the Chair of the Nevada Gaming Control Board; Chair of the Senate Education Committee; and a member of the Senate Judiciary, Finance, Education, and Commerce, Labor & Energy Committees. She is currently a Distinguished Fellow in Gaming and Leadership at the International Gaming Institute of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; Adjunct Professor of Law at the Boyd School of Law, UNLV; and venerable thought and key opinion leader on virtual gaming, regulations, IP, esports, and sports betting.
Saying the acquisition represents a giant leap forward for his company, Royal Wins President and CEO Peter Gan added that “working with a creative force like Becky Harris will assist Royal Wins in remaining current with gaming trends and on top of the ever-evolving development landscape as we expand and diversify our portfolio of games.”
The company will be looking to add to its portfolio of skill games offered in the Kash Karnival by inhouse game development, acquisitions such as Antics and in the near future, providing a SDK for other game developers to release their games on Kash Karnival through a partnering arrangement. The app includes games for everyone, including puzzles, arcade, action, and more. Inside the Kash Kingdom, players can compete in games for real cash payouts with outcomes determined by skills, not by chance, a differentiator from most games today that has investors paying attention to SKLL since its public listing on the CSE on July 20th.