NIP Group (NIPG), the owner of the esports brand Ninjas in Pyjamas, priced its IPO at $9.00 – the low end of its $9.00-to-$11.00 price range – and sold 2.25 million American Depositary Shares to raise $20.25 million on Thursday night, July 25, 2024. Jackson Wang, Hong Kong-born singer and pop star, is among NIP Group’s backers, the prospectus said.
Sportico – an online news site that covers “The Business of Sports” – described NIP Group’s IPO as “the latest financial litmus test for an industry – and business model – still reeling from an investment boom and bust cycle,” according to a story published today – Friday, July 26, 2024 – and distributed on Yahoo Finance.
US Tiger Brokers. GF Securities (Hong Kong), CLSA and Kingswood were the joint book-runners, according to the final prospectus.
NIP Group’s ADS jumped to $13.11 – up $4.11 or 45.67 percent from their $9.00 IPO price – when they started trading at 10:45 a.m. EDT today – Friday, July 26, 2024 – on the NASDAQ. Volume on that opening trade was 26,490 shares, according to NASDAQ. The stock’s intraday high was $13.12.
At 11:43 a.m. EDT, NIP Group’s stock was trading at $9.36 – up just 36 cents from their IPO price for a gain of 4 percent – on volume of more than 564,000 shares. By around 1:25 p.m. EDT, NIP Group’s stock was almost flat – trading at $9.06 – up 6 cents from its IPO price – on volume of more than 854,000 shares.
At around 1:48 p.m. EDT, NIP Group’s stock broke issue price and fell nearly $1.00 to trade at $8.04. By 3:32 p.m. EDT, NIP Group’s stock climbed back into the black to trade at its IPO price of $9.00. By 3:54 p.m. EDT, NIP Group’s stock traded at $9.20 – up 2.2 percent – on volume of more than 1 million shares.
NIP Group’s stock closed on Friday at $9.02 – up just 2 cents – on NASDAQ volume of about 1.06 million shares.
Esports From Sweden to China and Beyond
Stockholm-based NIP Group is an esports company with operations across Asia, Europe and South America, according to the prospectus.
NIP Group operates two esports brands: Ninjas in Pyjamas and eStar Gaming, according to the prospectus. Ninjas in Pyjamas, its PC/console esports brand, was founded in 2000 in Sweden. eStar Gaming, its mobile esports brand, was founded in 2014 in China.
“We have an expansive portfolio of esports teams, competing at the highest level in video game titles such as League of Legends, CS: GO, Honor of Kings, Rainbow Six, Rocket League, Fortnite and Call of Duty Mobile,” the prospectus said.
The company said that it believes “that there is tremendous potential in what we refer to as the “esports+” model, with the first phase being competitive esports itself – building championship-caliber teams across the most popular esports titles.”
NIP Group added: “Currently, we are focused on developing talent for both our esports teams and greater roster of online entertainers.
“On the esports side, we have combined Ninjas in Pyjamas’s 20-plus years of development experience as well as eStar Gaming’s demonstrated success in the burgeoning competitive mobile games market in the past five years. Our talent management business also focuses on developing esports athletes to become successful online entertainers, extending their success in the esports world further to the entertainment world.
“In 2020, Jackson Wang, one of the world’s most famous pop idols and one of the most followed male artists on Instagram, with approximately 33 million followers as of April 30, 2024, joined us as a partner and beneficial shareholder.”
For the year ended Dec. 31, 2023, NIP Group reported a net loss of $13.3 million on revenue of $83.7 million, according to the prospectus.
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