Australian gaming manufacturer Ainsworth Game Technology has confirmed speculation that it was seeking to delist from the Australia Stock Exchange (ASX) and go private, noting that it has already appointed a financial advisor to ‘undertake a review of all potential opportunities available to the company’.
A Monday filing indicated that Macquarie Capital has been appointed for a process which is still ‘in the early stages’. The group notes that ‘no expressions of interest have been received by the company’.
The company in the six months to June 30th recorded revenue of AU$143.6 million ($92 million), but profit to shareholders totaled just AU$4.1 million ($2.6 million), a near-30 percent drop from the same period of 2022.
Ainsworth’s privatization push aims to ‘assess all strategic alternatives which could assist the company in maximizing shareholder value,’ according to the Monday release.
The group notes this will include ‘a broad range of potential organic and inorganic alternatives,’ specifying that ‘there can be no assurance that any transaction will result’.
According to the Australian Financial Review, Austrian-based group Novomatic is the most likely suitor for the privatization, given that it owns over 50 percent of Ainsworth already.
Len Ainsworth, who sold his majority stake in the company in 2016 to Novomatic for nearly AU$500 million ($319 million), is also the founder of gaming giant Aristocrat.
