Keywords Studios, the Irish-headquartered but London-listed video gaming company, closed a €140 million ($155 million) revolving credit facility. The news comes as it reported a 17.3% rise in first half group revenues to €146.4 million ($163 million) from €124.8 million ($139 million) a year earlier.
Keywords, which provides a large range of services to the video games industry, said all seven of its service lines saw grew in the first six months with growth ranging from 5% to 33%.
Its functional testing and game development (formerly engineering) service lines, which are now the largest and second largest of its various businesses, recorded particularly strong revenue growth of 20 per cent and 19 percent respectively.
“We were pleased by the strong performance of the group in the first half, incorporating as it does the anticipated lower growth VMC business acquired in October 2017. Particularly steep increases in activity of some of our service lines in the first half required us to invest rapidly in expanding capacity to meet that demand. As we move into the second half, we expect to be able to leverage that investment to the benefit of margins,” said chief executive Andrew Day._x000D_
The new credit facility is being provided by Barclays Bank, Citibank, HSBC and Silicon Valley Bank for an initial €100 million ($111 million) over a three-year term, with the option to extend the facility up to €140 million and by a further two years. It replaces the existing €105 million ($117 million) facility the group has, on the same terms.
Established in 1998, Keywords now has more than 50 facilities in 21 countries and provides services including software engineering, testing and customer care services.
