Animoca Brands springs out of Crypto Winter with big surge in Q1 bookings

The metaverse-exploring venture capital conglomerate has emerged strongly from the ‘Crypto Winter’, lifting bookings in Q1 2024 by 72% versus Q1 2023.

Animoca Brands, the metaverse-exploring venture capital conglomerate, has emerged strongly from the ‘Crypto Winter’, lifting bookings in Q1 2024 by 72% versus Q1 2023.

The Hong Kong-based crypto-gaming and Web3 specialist also delivered a 14% reduction in operating costs over the same period, after dropping quarterly and full year numbers up to March 31 2024.

And that’s a period that offers a rare insight into the digital asset-verse and blockchain gaming world during a bearish market period we’ve come to know as the Crypto Winter.

This week, the Fortune Crypto 40 company – one of the most globally recognisable and far-reaching blockchain innovators – dropped a metaverse full of unaudited financial and business highlights for the year (to December 31), as well as the numbers for the March quarter just ended.

Unsurprisingly, Animoca Brands says its total bookings for 2023 fell by about 30%, from US$402 million in 2022 to $280 million – a direct result of the slump in blockchain activity during the economic icing over of the Web3 market following the calamitous collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange,  the collapse of Luna and TerraUSD, and the crypto-related fallout which led to the crypto bear market that swallowed 2022 and much of 2023.

But the comeback this year has been emphatic, with the company landing bookings of some $90 million for the three months to 31 March 2024, compared with the $52 million in the first quarter of 2023.

Bookings in the first quarter of 2024 include the following:

Animoca Brands says that 80% of Q1 bookings were achieved by the Digital Asset Advisory business and other projects driven out of Animoca headquarters.

The company says it’s also cut down on operating costs – of $55 million over Q1 against the $64 million in the first quarter of 2023 – a 14% decrease.

The FY23 bookings reflect the company’s successful diversification across the full Web3 blockchain-metaverse spectrum – with some $77 million in bookings via its digital asset advisory (which includes fees from token advisory, trading, and blockchain node operations); $182 million in sales from subsidiaries and projects incubated by Animoca Brands (which include token sales, NFT sales, in-app purchases), and other non-blockchain sales.

The company says it continues to develop and publish a broad portfolio of products particularly in the Web3 gaming and metaverse sectors, including original games such as The Sandbox, Phantom Galaxies, Life Beyond, and Crazy Defense Heroes. It also offers products that utilise popular intellectual properties from the worlds of sports and entertainment, such as The Walking Dead, Power Rangers, MotoGP™, the AFL, Olympics, and Formula E.

For 2023 Animoca Brands also booked $21 million from investments, which includes realised gains from digital asset investments and investment management fees from Animoca Ventures.

Digital asset advisory revenues and realised gains from investment activity generated by Animoca Brands HQ made up some 35% of total bookings last year.

Animoca Brands remains in a strong financial position heading into 2024, the company says.

Considering the array of new subsidiaries operating under the Animoca Brands group as a result of acquisitions in 2022, total operating expenses of $246 million last year were only slightly higher, up from $234 million in 2022.

The increase was offset by cost reduction initiatives across all subsidiaries as well as the addition of a new business line providing digital asset advisory services.

The second half of 2023 saw a 9% decrease in operating expenses compared to the first half of the year, Animoca Brands reports.

Despite the fall in full-year bookings, Animoca Brands’ performance quickly turned around toward the back end of last year and into this one as digital asset markets thawed and the flow of money, excitement and ideas returned to the international industry.

In March the company entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST) to collaborate to advance the Web3 and gaming ecosystem in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (refer to announcement of 11 March 2024).

And Q4 2023 bookings jumped almost 60% on the previous quarter.

These results – in addition to Animoca Brands’ core Web3 services revenue (and revenue from portfolio investments and partnerships) – include contributions from Animoca Brands’ headline business segments – a vast array of projects and businesses that include

The above is the detailed content of Animoca Brands springs out of Crypto Winter with big surge in Q1 bookings. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!