First Day of Dealings

RNS Number : 2609J

Frontier Developments PLC

15 July 2013

 



15 July 2013

NOT FOR PUBLICATION, DISTRIBUTION OR RELEASE IN THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND, THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA, JAPAN OR AUSTRALIA, OR THEIR RESPECTIVE TERRITORIES OR POSSESSIONS

Frontier Developments plc

Admission to AIM - First Day of Dealings

Frontier Developments plc ("Frontier" or the "Company"), a leading developer of video games with studios in Cambridge, UK and Halifax, Canada, announces the commencement of dealings in its Ordinary Shares on AIM today. Frontier's AIM symbol is FDEV and the ISIN number GB00BBT32N39.

The Company has raised £4.0 million (before expenses) through a placing of 3,169,292 new Ordinary Shares (the "Placing"). Frontier's Market capitalisation at the Placing Price is £39.4 million.

Founded in 1994 by David Braben, co-author of the seminal Elite game, Frontier has an experienced management and development team that has consistently delivered high quality, innovative and commercially successful games in a continually evolving industry.

Frontier's proprietary "Cobra" technology powers its efficient, cross-platform software development spanning personal computers, tablets, smartphone and videogame consoles across a wide variety of game genres. Frontier has a strong track record of successfully leveraging its software technology in games for several decades, with titles including RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, LostWinds, Kinectimals, Kinect Disneyland Adventures and Coaster Crazy games.

The expansion of games into the mainstream entertainment industry and advent of digital distribution on all platforms brings significant opportunity and the funds raised will allow Frontier to expand its current business and add further technology extensions and developments to proprietary software development platform Cobra.

Cobra development will be undertaken in conjunction with development of Elite: Dangerous, in a move that will enable Frontier to ultimately license key elements of its technology and related services to third parties.

Admission to AIM ("Admission") follows a pre-IPO fundraising that raised £2.8 million. Frontier is debt free, has £7.2 million of cash (as at 31 May 2013), and has entered into a revolving credit facility with Barclays Bank plc for £3.0 million, so is in a strong position to take its business to the next stage.

Canaccord Genuity is the Nominated Adviser and Broker to Frontier and acted as sole Bookrunner to the Placing.

David Braben, Frontier Developments CEO, said:  

"I am delighted by the level of support Frontier has received and by the calibre of our investors, whose participation in our IPO is a strong endorsement of the growth potential we have identified.

"Frontier's admission to AIM, along with the funding we secured earlier this year, will support our efforts to further enhance the capabilities of our technology platform Cobra as the expansion of games into the mainstream entertainment industry and advent of digital distribution provide significant opportunity to generate further growth."

Placing details

Placing price per ordinary share	127p
Number of new ordinary shares placed	3,169,292
Gross proceeds of the placing for the Group	£4.0 million
Proportion of the Enlarged Share Capital being placed	10.2%
Market capitalisation at the placing price	£39.4 million
Number of Ordinary Shares in issue following admission	31,044,422

Ticker Symbol:

AIM:FDEV

Terms used in this announcement have the same meanings as those defined in the Admission Document.

Enquiries:

Frontier Development	[phone]
David Braben, CEO
David Walsh, COO Neil Armstrong, CFO
Canaccord Genuity	[phone]
Simon Bridges/Cameron Duncan/Joe Weaving
College Hill	[phone]
Kay Larsen/Adrian Duffield

Frontier Developments

Frontier was founded in 1994 by David Braben, co-author of the seminal Elite game. The Group has around 227 full-time employees and operations in Cambridge, UK and Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Frontier has a proven track record of software technology development and innovation spanning several decades of rapid technological change.  Frontier has exploited its technology to develop innovative videogames across a wide variety of different game genres and platforms, and has established relationships with globally renowned partners.

At the end of 2012, Frontier raised £1.6 million via Kickstarter, the crowd funding service, and its own site. The funds were raised specifically to develop Elite: Dangerous - the latest iteration of the Elite game that CEO David Braben originally co-authored in 1982 and was published in 1984. Elite was one of the first home computer games to use 3D graphics and the first to employ an open-world 'sandbox' gameplay model.  Its revolutionary 3D graphics ensured that the game created the modern space flight simulation genre and influenced gaming as a whole.

Cobra

Frontier's Cobra software technology has been developed and evolved since 1988.  Initially conceived as a solution for the problem of easily porting the same game across different target hardware devices, Cobra today supports multi-core CPU and GPU architectures of PC, console, tablet and smartphone with a modular, high performance system offering of state of the art efficiency and visual fidelity that is applicable across a wide range of game genres. 

Cobra incorporates a framework which enables rapid development of powerful game creation tools, which offer the ability to view, tweak and review changes to content (e.g. animations, audio, 3D models etc) on target platforms in a live game session running on that platform, without the intervention of a programmer. 

For more details on Cobra see http://www.frontier.co.uk/our_technology/

Further information

On Admission the Company's Series A1 and Series A2 Unsecured Convertible Notes issued as part of the pre-IPO financing on 14 June 2013 have converted into Ordinary Shares at a discount of 15% to the placing price. 2,509,504 Ordinary Shares have been issued on the conversion of such notes. Jonathan Milner, a non-executive director of the Company, held £375,000 of Series A1 Unsecured Convertible Notes which have converted into 347,384 Ordinary Shares on Admission. The interests of the Directors and their connected persons in the share capital of the Company immediately following Admission are set out below:

Director	Number of Ordinary Shares	Percentage of enlarged issued share capital immediately following Admission %
David John Braben	17,494,380	56.4
David Ranken Gammon (1)	224,720	0.7
Jonathan Simon Milner (2)	572,104	1.8
David John Walsh (3)	1,245,820	4.0
Jonathan Francis Watts	23,500	0.1
Total	19,560,524	63.0

(1)  Held by Rockspring, David Gammon and his family are beneficially interested in these Ordinary Shares

(2)  56,180 Ordinary Shares will be held by the JS Milner Accumulation and Maintenance Trust in which Jonathan Milner is beneficially interested

(3)  490,000 Ordinary Shares are registered in the name of Gillian Walsh

Pursuant to a lock-in and orderly market agreement dated 9 July 2013, the Directors and their connected persons holding the Ordinary Shares set out above have undertaken, subject to certain exceptions, not to dispose of such Ordinary Shares (or any interest therein) for a period of one year from the date of Admission.

 

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