Games Global curiously cancels its IPO hours before it was set to go public

Games Global, a company that supplies many of the casino games found on platforms like DraftKings and FanDuel, was set to go public on Tuesday, ringing the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Instead, the Games Global IPO is on hold after the company pulled the plug on its plans to go public late Monday afternoon.



Hours, perhaps minutes, before the company was set to price initial shares, it instead filed a Withdrawal of Registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), saying it was canceling the IPO, citing “market conditions.”



“Due to current market conditions, the company has determined not to pursue, at this time, the initial public offering of the company’s ordinary shares,” the filing reads.



Games Global was set to trade under the symbol GGL. The abrupt decision to cancel the listing has baffled analysts, who note that the IPO market has been healthy of late and the NYSE is near its all-time high.



“The market conditions have been pretty good and there’s more fluidity in the IPO market,” Mike Hickey of the Benchmark Company tells Fast Company . “Inasmuch as [Games Global has] exposure to the U.S., the numbers are huge and growth has been exceptional. And [gaming] stocks, for the most part, reflect that.”



The Games Global IPO was expected to price between $16 and $19 per share, with hopes to raise approximately $250 million. It’s possible demand for the company was not as strong as hoped, which would have resulted in a lower-than-wished-for IPO price, though there have been no reports of this.



While tomorrow’s IPO is off, Games Global did keep the door open somewhat for an offering down the road. In its filing, the company asked the SEC that “all fees paid to the Commission in connection with the filing of the Registration Statement be credited for future use.”



The U.S. markets have been opening up rapidly for online gambling, but Hickey notes that this is, ultimately, a global market . Both DraftKings and MGM Resorts have turned their attentions to Brazil recently as the country has emerged as one of the world’s top betting markets. (It was only last year that it began opening up to online gaming services, however.)



As unusual as a last-minute decision to pull a filing might sound, this isn’t the first time it has happened. WeWork in September of 2019, canceled its IPO the night before it was scheduled to go public, after investors raised questions about its valuation and the control that cofounder Adam Neumann held. Other companies that canceled or postponed IPOs shortly before their debut include Endeavor Group Holdings and Ant Group, a financial technology company affiliated with Alibaba (although that listing was quashed directly by China President Xi Jinping .)



Gambling stocks have been mixed this year. Year to date, DraftKings is up 29% and FanDuel owner Flutter Entertainment is up 17%. MGM Resorts is down 10%, though, while PENN Entertainment is off 39%.



Games Global was a bit of a different sort of animal, however, as it supplies games to all those companies. The Games Global IPO was, in some ways, an investor pure play when it came to online gambling, letting them own a piece of the company that supplies all the major public-facing players.