1 February 2016

Keywords Studios plc ("Keywords Studios" or "the Group")

Full year trading Update

Strong organic growth complemented by successful acquisitions

Keywords Studios, the international technical services provider to the global video games industry today provides an update on trading after another year of strong organic growth complemented by a number of successful acquisitions.

The Group is pleased to announce that it expects to report revenues and adjusted PBT* comfortably ahead of consensus market expectations, when it announces its final results for the year ended 31 December 2015 on 5 April 2016.  This performance has been driven by ongoing strong pro forma organic growth, with the continued robust performances from our existing service lines complemented by positive contributions from our newer service lines, customer support and art creation.

The Group has made good progress in line with its stated strategy of growing both organically and by acquisition to extend the Group's client base, market penetration and service lines, where the Group can use its existing expertise, multi-service platform, scale and global reach to consolidate its position as the market leader in providing outsourced services to the video games industry.  During the year, organic growth has been complemented by the acquisitions of Reverb and Kite Team, which have given Keywords a presence in South America, Alchemic Dream which has provided an entry into customer support services and Liquid Development which increased the scale of the Group's operations in the buoyant art creation market.

The Group continues to review a healthy pipeline of acquisition opportunities with a view to selectively acquiring attractive businesses to strengthen its range of services and extend its global reach. The successful equity placing to raise £10m, which was announced on 26 November 2015, has put the Group in a great position to complete some of the more advanced acquisitions in this pipeline, and has further enhanced its shareholder base through the addition of a number of blue chip institutional investors from the UK as well as from the US, Germany and France. 

Andrew Day, Chief Executive of Keywords, commented:

"The Group continues to deliver a strong performance as it grows market share and wins new clients. 2015 was a year in which the console game production and publishing cycle flourished and, whilst it remains early in the year, 2016 is showing signs of being another good year for the Group, with some early business wins and increasing levels of cross selling emerging from our global sales force.

"Overall, we look forward to continuing our investments in our newly acquired entities as well as undertaking further complementary acquisitions and, in doing so, expanding our market by offering increased choice of services and geographic delivery centres to our video game development and publisher clients."

* The Group reports adjusted PBT before acquisition and integration expenses, share option charges, amortisation of intangibles and foreign currency gains 

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