Aristocrat moves into social gaming with US acquisition

POKER machine giant Aristocrat (ASX: ALL) has completed its $1.4 billion acquisition of popular social media gaming company Big Fish Games in a move the company says will drive revenue growth even further.

Aristocrat's deal to secure the Seattle-based Big Fish is part of its expansion strategy into the US and it provides the company with a platform to capitalise on the worldwide boom in mobile games.

"The strategic and financial benefits of this acquisition are highly compelling," says Aristocrat's CEO and managing director Trevor Croker.

"Big Fish will immediately provide scale across our entire digital platform, and our social casino business will become the second largest social casino publisher globally.

"Big Fish's digital-first social casino content and industry leading meta-game capability and applications are highly complementary to Aristocrat's existing and industry-leading land based digital content business."

The hugely popular Big Fish games, which are designed for mobile and laptop include Big Fish, Gummy Drop! and Fairway Solitaire.

Big Fish has about 700 employees and five studios in Seattle and Oakland in the US.

Aristocrat, which is number 15 on our 2017 Sydney Top Companies List, reported a full year profit rise of 41.3 per cent to $495.1 million for the year to September 30, 2017, with revenues of $2.45 billion.

Analysts have noted that 50 per cent of Aristocrat's total revenue is recurring and UBS expects that proportion of recurring revenue to grow further. This gives the company and its investors some degree of certainty over future sales figures.