Q&A: Tangelo Games chairman on M&A and the importance of social features
Vicens Marti explains the benefits of being a listed social casino company and why his firm expects to be at the centre of industry M&A in 2018
Q: You’ve described Tangelo Games as the only global publicly quoted company exclusively focused on social casino – how does being listed help or hinder operations?
A: From an operational perspective, while the daily operations of the company are unaltered by being publicly quoted, we do have a series of reporting responsibilities and compliance obligations in our listing market, the TSX Venture in Toronto.
By being public, both debt and equity financing are available in the measure of our operating results, which are disclosed quarterly to the public. This implies a series of tools which can be useful in the context of the vibrant M&A opportunities in social casino.
Q: Is Tangelo an acquisition target for some of the larger social casino firms?
A: The M&A landscape for social and mobile games remains robust with over $4bn in transactions in 2017 and social casino is a particularly attractive segment within it. There is no doubt Tangelo is in an ideal position within that scenario. The company keeps being rated among the top 20 social casino game publishers by revenues on Facebook and web by Eilers & Krejcik analysts and has always been on the radar of the main industry players.
We expect the industry to remain dynamic on the M&A front during 2018 and Tangelo to be part of any conversations.
Q: What are you doing around the teamwork/social features that are driving growth at some firms?
A: Tangelo Spain is driving new user revenue through innovative new features, including the introduction of its coin “bank” and new missions and tournaments which had the effect of growing portal revenue in Spain and Latin America, including Argentina and Mexico.
We are also very bullish on the whole concept of live operations and Tangelo is implementing a firm plan around that concept all throughout 2018.
Q: You saw a Q4 revenue decline due to “lack of new content” – why was there a lack of new content and how will that change going forward?
A: During 2017 our technical team has been focused on completing our migration from Flash to Unity and our operating teams have been fighting hard to consolidate the merge of our two subsidiaries with the goal of driving user growth and spend across our current platforms. Now our focal point is the launch of the Mundigames and Best Jackpot apps, which will see light during this year.
Q: One of your key markets is Latin America/ Southern Europe. How are your games targeted for these regions?
A: Tangelo Games’ Spain success in regional specialization lies in our ability of adapting both our gaming platforms and products to each country offering a tailored online customer experience.
In this sense, we offer five different web apps including Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian and English. Each of them with a local taste not only through the selection of games and language but also through native customer service support, methods of payment and CRM campaigns, according to the targeted country.
Each brand features a tailored selection of games according to the country’s cultural tradition, which means that if a Brazilian visits www.ludijogos.com, a banner of Buraco will pop up while a French player will easily find Belote on www.mundijeux.fr and so on.