The Final Price Of Cloud Imperium's Acquisition Of Turbulent Media: $9.8 Million Canadian

Back in February I attempted to calculate how much money Cloud Imperium Games made (or lost) in 2023 and the revenues required to break even in 2024. As part of the effort I attempted to assess how much money CIG spent to acquire Turbulent Media, a key outsourcing partner working not only working on CIG's website infrastructure but parts of Star Citizen as well. The answer is in the financial accounts submitted to UK Companies House, but those were not received until 3 March and only posted on Monday. In their absence, I estimated the cost was $29.6 million USD. According to the documentation, I was off by a factor of 4.

Actual Transaction Cost, p36 of the 2022 accounts

According to the accounts:

Cloud Imperium UK Ltd. sold it's 25% shareholding in Turbulent Media Inc to 9491-4561 Quebec Inc on 2 July 2023 in exchange for 25% of the share capital of 9491-4561 Quebec Inc. Cloud Imperium UK Ltd. acquired the remaining 75% of 9491-4561 Quebec Inc on 2 July 2023 for a consideration including professional fees of $9,843,791 Canadian Dollars. The entity 9491-4561 Quebec Inc is the ultimate parent company of Turbulent Media Inc.

The conversion rate on 2 July 2023 puts the U.S. currency price at $7.4 million U.S. Dollars.

If I've read all CIG's available financial documents correctly, CIG did not pay the entire amount in cash. I estimated the 30,120 shared given to Turbulent's co-founders Marc Beaudet and Benoit Beausejour was worth approximately $1.3 million. That's assuming the value of CIG has not gone up over the last 6 years. If the value has gone up, the amount of cash needed to complete the sale goes down.

If CIG only needed up to $6 million to complete the acquisition then they either could have paid cash from the company's reserves or used its line of credit (possibly wrong terminology) with Coutts & Co. until the tax rebate from the U.K. government arrived. The small amount needed would mean CIG did not need to go to another bank, which is a good thing as Coutts & Co holds a charge over all of CIG's rights, title, and interest in Star Citizen and Squadron 42.

This post is a mea culpa for my previous bad estimate for the acquisition price of Turbulent Media by Cloud Imperium. I'll have to go back to my previous post and put in a correction. Getting the information straight from a document submitted to U.K. Companies House is a lot better than the information I tried to compile from sources on the Internet.