Australian gaming and betting company Aristocrat Leisure (ASX: ALL) has announced that it has agreed to buy Israeli-US digital lottery company NeoGames (Nasdaq: NGMS) for $1.2 billion (A$1.8 billion).
NeoGames is managed from Ramat Hahayal in Tel Aviv by Moti Malul. The acquisition is at a price of $29.5 per share, representing a premium of 130% over Friday’s closing price of $12.84.
The main shareholders in NeoGames are company founder Barak Matalon, with a 23.1% holding, and Eli Azur and Pini Zahavi, with 14.5% each. Sunriver Management, LLC has a holding of 5.4%, and the CEO, Malul, holds 1.2%. This means that Matalon will receive $234 million in the deal, Azur and Zahavi will receive $146 million each, and Malul will receive $11.7 million.
This is Aristocrat Leisure’s second acquisition in Israel. In the past, it bought Herzliya-based Plarium for $700 million from, among other shareholders, Gigi Levy and Yitzchak Mirilashvili, current owner of Channel 14 television. It has a market cap on the Australian Securities Exchange of A$25.4 billion. Its share price rose 2.1% today.
NeoGames was floated on Nasdaq in early 2021, and then sold shares in a further round in which betting company Caesars, which had been a large shareholder, sold half of its holding. The company was founded as a provide of services to government lotteries, and grew considerably during the Covid pandemic when it helped lotteries to sell tickets to customers without them having to leave home.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on May 15, 2023.
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