Hong Kong-based gaming software firm and Web3 investment powerhouse Animoca Brands, which has plans of going public, reported “total sales activity” of $108 million in Q4 2024, up 170% compared with $40 million a year ago.
Total sales activity, also known as ‘bookings’, combines revenue reflected on the income statement and deferred revenue, which is a liability on the balance sheet.
Founded in January 2014, by Yat Siu and David Kim, Animoca has been considering the US as one of its preferred listing destinations besides Hong Kong and the Middle East, the firm’s co-founder and executive chairman Yat Siu had told DealStreetAsia in an earlier interview, without divulging the timeline.
The firm appointed Hall Chadwick as the firm’s new group auditor in December 2024.
Digital asset advisory posts 116% YoY revenue growth
The Web3 investment giant recorded a total of $314 million in bookings for the 12 months ended December 31, 2024, up 12.1% from $280 million in the previous year, according to a company release on Wednesday evening.
Animoca Brands currently sources its sales activities through digital asset advisory (DAA); Web3 operating business, and investment management.
The biggest source of bookings is DAA, which accounts for 52.5% of the total sales activity in 2024. DAA, which includes token advisory, tokenomics, marketing, listing advisory, node operation, and trading services, posted a 116% year-over-year growth in 2024, as Animoca diversified its revenue streams.
Web3 operating businesses of subsidiaries and projects incubated by Animoca, which include blockchain-based sales, in-app purchases, and other non-blockchain sales, contributed around 35% of the total sales activity in 2024.
The rest (12.5%) comes from Animoca’s investment activity, spanning realised gains from digital asset investments to investment management fees from Animoca Ventures.
Operating expenses excluding non-cash and non-token payments saw a slight drop as the firm started to cut costs and optimise its financials in the second half of 2023. This resulted in an 11.8% year-over-year drop in total operating expenses in 2024.
As of 2024, Animoca holds cash and stablecoin balances of $293 million; and holds $538 million of digital assets in its balance sheet, per the company release.
18.3% drop in valuations of private investment holding
Despite a crypto venture capital winter in 2024—Crypto VCs raised only $5.1 billion across 79 funds last year, compared to $19.4 billion across 140 venture funds in 2022—Animoca remains active in making bets over blockchain firms.
Animoca has backed over 106 crypto firms in 2024, according to data provider CryptoRank. The deal count makes it the most active crypto investor in the year, followed by OKX Ventures, the investment arm of crypto exchange OKX, which backed 80 deals in 2024.
As of 2024, the firm has made minority investments in over 540 portfolio companies, which translates to $564 million in fair valuation as of Q4 2024. The valuation of Animoca’s private investment holdings, however, marked an 18.3% plunge compared to the $690 million recorded at the end of 2023.
Part of the reason for the valuation drop is that several of Animoca’s equity and Simple Agreements for Future Tokens (SAFT) holdings have been written down in 2024 “due to the changes in their underlying business performance”.
Also, as the firm rolled out token launches for some of its portfolio firms, some of the investment holdings’ value has been transferred into digital assets or cash/stablecoins, as they are no longer a part of the portfolio balance.
