Igor and Dmitry Bukhman: "We will not sell Playrix for $3 billion"
Wall Street banks are showing interest in the game company Playrix created in Russia. Its founders, brothers Igor and Dmitry Bukhman, have already met with representatives of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Bank of America Corp.
Igor and Dmitry Bukhman, photo by Corinna Kern/Bloomberg
This is stated in the detailed material about Playrix on the pages of Bloomberg.
We have highlighted the main thing from the material.
- According to the Billionaires Index Bloomberg, the fortune of each of the Buchmans is about $ 1.4 billion.
- The most profitable market for Playrix is the USA. China is in second place in terms of sales, and Japan is in third.
- The company’s staff now numbers 1,100 people. Offices are located in four countries. The head office is in Ireland, but the development itself is carried out in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The interview was conducted in Tel Aviv.
- The company’s main revenue comes from in-game micropayments. Its advertising revenue is less than 3%.
- Recently, Playrix acquired several gaming companies, but so far refuses to name which ones.
- In February, there were rumors that Playrix could be sold for $3 billion. The Buchmans declare that they will not sell the company for such a sum. However, they note that last year they just talked on strategic topics with representatives of Wall Street banks. Communication with them is explained by the desire to increase the size of the business.
- At the same time, the Buchmans note that there is no magic amount for which they will sell the company. Money for them is secondary to their favorite business — creating games.
“Some people think that if you have a lot of money, everything changes, everything becomes more interesting and you rush to do some other things. But not in our case. We just keep working,” Dmitry notes in an interview.
Today, the main task of the Buchmans, according to them, is to make Playrix a top company that will challenge Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts in the West, as well as NetEase and Tencent in China. “We want to become as big thanks to the talent of developers from our region — the former USSR and Eastern Europe,” says Igor.
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