A pair of brothers have become joint billionaires overnight as mainland webgame developer Forgame (0484) invested US$70m to acquire 20% stake in their firm, which developed the popular free mobile game Tower of Saviors

March 9, 2014 Leave a comment

Gamers tower as new billionaires 
Imogene Wong
Wednesday, March 05, 2014
image001-16It means the game developer, owned by Terry Tsang Kin-chung and younger brother Terence Tsang Kin-ho, who are in their early 30s, is worth an estimated HK$2.6 billion, compared to its net profit before taxation and extraordinary items of HK$46.7 million in 2013.A pair of brothers have become joint billionaires overnight as mainland webgame developer Forgame (0484) invested US$70 million (HK$546 million) to acquire a one-fifth stake in their firm, which developed the popular free mobile game Tower of Saviors.

The smartphone game Tower of Saviors – launched in Hong Kong and Taiwan in January last year with Taiwanese actress Michelle Chen Yanxi as the spokeswoman – has become one of the top three most popular mobile games in the region.

It has just announced it had reached 10 million free downloads last month.

Terry Tsang said in an interview last year that a sixth of the downloaders paid to play the game, and its daily average revenue per paid user was about US$40.

Forgame, the Guangzhou-based webgame developer which was listed in October last year, announced yesterday it was buying a 21 percent stake in Magic Feature, the controlling shareholder of Mad Head – developer of Tower of Saviors – for US$70 million.

The mainland developer will also pay an additional US$4.2 million if Magic Feature reaches an annual profit target of over US$80 million in 2014.

Forgame can further increase its stake to 35 percent, it added.

It said if the firm is to list in futu
image002-7Terry Tsang revealed earlier that he once had only HK$9.96 left in his bank account – a year and a half after resigning from his HK$40,000-a-month fund- selling job to start his own business in 2008.re, with an estimated value of over US$675 million, Forgame will sell its stake so the Tsang brothers can maintain a controlling stake of 50.1 percent.

The brothers, graduates of the Hong Kong University of Science and Tecnology, began with an electronic greeting card website and designing Facebook games before turning to smartphone games.

Forgame’s shares jumped as much as 11 percent yesterday. It closed at HK$59.30, up 7 percent.

 

Filed under Macro Trends, TMT Trends

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