Animoca Brands reports a sharp 167% rise in books in Q4 to $108M
Animoca Brands reported Q4 bookings coming in at $108 milliion, up 167% times from $40 million a year ago.
The blockchain game and investment company also said it had $57 million in revenue from its digital asset advisory business. It also had $37 million from Web3 operating businesses and $14 million from investment management. The company reported its unaudited financial results for the fourth quarter and full year.
Annual bookings were $314 million for the 12 months ended December 31, 2024, up 12% from $280 million a year earlier.
The bigger contributors to the results were The Sandbox, Moca Network, Open Campus, Anichess, Gamee, TinyTap, Animoca Brands Japan, nWay, Eden Games, Blowfish Studios, Pixowl, and Crazy Defense Heroes (TOWER).
In addition, revenue came in via Web3 services adn revenue arising from portfolio investments and partnerships.
Bookings by each business segment included $165 million from digital asset advisory business, which was up 116% from a year ago. The company also reported $110 million from Web3 operating businesses of subsidiaries and projects incubated by the company, which include blockchain-based sales, in-app purchases, and other non-blockchain sales. And it had $39 million in investment activity, which includes realized gains from digital asset investments and investment management fees from Animoca Ventures (any unrealized investment gains are reflected in the balance sheet).
Animoca Brands said operating expenses (excluding non-cash and non-token-based payments such as share-based payments) were $217 million for the 12 months ending on 31 December 2024, compared with $246 million for the prior 12 months. Total operating expenses decreased by 12% in 2024 as a continuation of the optimization initiatives that began in the second half of 2023 across the Company and its subsidiaries, including cost reductions and the leveraging of new AI tools.
The company also reported operating expenses of $49 million in Q4 2024, compared with $58 million in Q4 2023, representing a 15% decrease in expenses from a year earlier.
Financial assets and token reserve balances as of 31 December 2024 include the following: cash and stablecoin balances of $293 million; Digital assets of $538 million, composed of $356 million inavailable-for-sale assets and $182 million from unvested assets subject to lock-up on the balance sheet.
Major liquid tokens held on the balance sheet include ETH, BTC, APE, and others; minority investments in over 540 portfolio companies, which includes investments made by Animoca Ventures. The fair value of the company’s minority investment holdings is $564 million as of the end of Q4 2024. It also has off-balance sheet token reserves of $2.9 billion, comprising tokens issued by Animoca Brands majority-owned Web3 subsidiaries and projects for which Animoca Brands is a launch partner.
These reserves include tokens such as SAND, EDU, MOCA, GMEE, and others.
Moca Network, one of Animoca Brands’ flagship projects, is building the chain-agnostic digital identity infrastructure for the open internet by providing one universal account for a user’s assets, identity, and reputation across multiple ecosystems.
Moca Network evolved from the Mocaverse project; the latter is now positioned as Moca Network’s consumer brand providing curated experiences and rewards to users based on their activity and reputation through the digital identifier (DID) Moca ID and products including Mocana, MocaDrop, and MocaList.
Moca Network is powered by MOCA Coin, which is issued by the MOCA Foundation and serves as the utility token for data generation, storage, verification for users, AI agents, and DAO governance.
In October 2024, Moca Network announced a partnership with Symbiogenesis, the first NFT collectible art project of Square Enix, the leading Japanese video game publisher and entertainment company. The partnership aims to facilitate a seamless onboarding experience to the Web3 ecosystem for a crypto-curious audience.
In November 2024, Animoca Brands announced a raise of an additional tranche of funding of US$10 million for Moca Network, following the previous investments totaling $31.88 million previously announced in December 2023. This funding tranche included participation from OKX Ventures, CMCC Global, HongShan (formerly Sequoia China), Republic Digital, Decima Fund, Kingsway Capital and others, with the purpose to fast-track and scale Moca Network’s operations.
Moca Network also announced a business partnership with SK Planet, one of South Korea’s largest information and communications technology platforms, to co-create blockchain-enabled user experiences within SK Planet’s existing internet services, which will make use of Moca Network’s Account, Identity, and Reputation SDK (AIR SDK). SK Planet and Moca Network aim to onboard SK Planet’s 28 million KYC’d members to Web3.
In December 2024, MOCA Coin was listed on Upbit and Bithumb, two of the largest digital asset exchanges in South Korea. In addition, Binance Futures launched a USDⓈ-Margined MOCAUSDT perpetual contract with leverage (USDⓈ-Margined contracts are crypto derivatives quoted and settled in USDT, BUSD or USDC).
Anichess is a progressive chess-based online strategy Web3 gaming project developed in a collaboration between Animoca Brands and Chess.com, the leading global online chess platform. In October 2024, Anichess launched the public alpha version of its game and partnered with Yield Guild Games (YGG) to distribute the game in Southeast Asia, one of Anichess’ top three regions in terms of registered players. In December 2024, Anichess recorded over 100,000 monthly active players.
Gamee is a high-engagement mobile gaming platform focused on onboarding a mass gaming audience to Web3. It has over 100 million registered users and has served over 10 billion gameplay sessions across multiple ecosystems. Gamee’s WatBird games and WatPoint mining have collectively onboarded 4 million user wallets into the TON ecosystem.
In December 2024, GAMEE announced the launch of Gamee AdNetwork, a community-owned tokenized advertising network powered by the Gamee token. Gamee AdNetwork leverages Gamee’s total reach of more than 100 million registered users and 2 billion monthly impressions across its various games and products, with the aim to enhance the way value generated by digital advertising is shared with advertisers as well as their audiences. Gamee AdNetwork executed 17 ad campaigns during Q4 2024.
Additionally, Gamee sold over 250,000 Founders Packs of Moon Cards to more than 230,000 unique holders for over 701 million WATCoin (approximately $230,000 at the time of sale). WATCoin is the utility token of WatBird on the TON blockchain.
The Sandbox is an immersive metaverse platform in which users play, create, and monetize unique experiences alongside their favorite brands, IPs, and celebrities across gaming, entertainment, music, art, and other aspects of culture. Animoca Brands acquired The Sandbox in 2018 and it has been one of the company’s main game operating businesses since then. The top-line bookings of The Sandbox arepredominantly from the sale of SAND tokens and NFT sales.
The Alpha Season 4 of The Sandbox started on October 9 and ended on December 18 2024. Partners involved in this season include Attack on Titan, Chupa Chups, Fist of the North Star, Gordon Ramsay Hell’s Kitchen, Lionsgate, Playboy, Rabbids, The British Museum, The Smurfs, and more.
Over 580,000 unique players completed more than 39 million quests in the Alpha Season 4, accumulating over a million gameplay hours, which averages to 144 minutes of gameplay time per user.
In Q4 2024, Animoca Brands invested in 12 new projects, bringing the total number of investments made during the year to over 70. These investments span over 20 sectors, including AI, infrastructure, decentralized finance (DeFi), and gaming.
Notable investments include 0G Labs, Cookie3, FLock.io, MyShell, and Talus. The company has focused its efforts on the AI sector in 2024 by investing in liquid tokens of AI-themed projects, including Virtuals, ai16z, Aixbt, Griffain, and HeyAnon.
As of the end of 2024, the fair valuation of the Company’s private investment holdings stood at $564 million, primarily consisting of equity and SAFT (Simple Agreements for Future Tokens) investments in private companies and Web3 projects. As at the end of 2023, the valuation of the company’s private investment holdings was $690 million.
On December 23, 2024, Animoca Brands held a general meeting in which shareholders approved a resolution to remove DFK Collins and appoint Hall Chadwick as the company’s group auditor.
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