Immotion Group IPO as interest in VR continues to skyrocket

12 July 2018

Sure Ventures backed Immotion Group have today listed on AIM after announcing their intent to list officially last week. Immotion Group are striving to become the market leader in ‘out of home’ entertainment, combining best in class Virtual Reality with cutting edge motion platforms to create a unique, fully immersive entertainment experience. The state of the art experiences will be offered to consumers in leisure destinations such as shopping centres and family entertainment centres.

Immotion Group was the first direct investment by the entrepreneur led Venture Capital firm, Sure Ventures in April 2018 who specialise in AR, VR and IoT and is led by Chief Investment Officer, Barry Downes.

Speaking of the IPO, Barry Downes commented “As we know, the VR and AR space is booming, and the market is forecast to grow significantly over the next few years. Immotion Group are pioneers in the industry and, with their unique immersive experience, they’re set to fully transform family, out of home entertainment. The team behind Immotion are a group of true innovators and we don’t see anything slowing them down.”

The full operation of Immotion Group incorporates three key areas – Content Creation, Motion Platforms and Proprietary Content Management Systems which allows the company to continue to evolve and offer fresh, high quality content. Within their content creation, Immotion’s subsidiaries, ‘Studios’ and ‘C2K’ have over 20 years of expertise in computer generated animation. Their historic clients include BBC, Toyota and Warner Brothers.

The unique cinema pod motion platforms from Immotion have been developed in exclusive partnership with a Chinese manufacturer which has enabled Immotion to optimise their hardware design and functionality. Whilst their bespoke Content Management System allows the group to analyse experience statistics on each machine in real time in addition to distributing content.

For investors, the revenue model for Immotion has four key channels to market. 1) Motion Platform Sales which will see distribution throughout Europe, North America and the Middle East. 2) Immotion VR, which Immotion will own and operate platforms in shopping malls and high footfall locations, consumers will pay a small fee for the experience. 3) Concessions, through partnership opportunities with high traffic leisure destination partners. VR content will be tailored to suit the location and revenue will be shared with the concession partner. 4) Turnkey & Commercial Solutions which will see Immotion continue to offer immersive solutions for commercial clients as well as larger turnkey VR solutions.

Speaking of the IPO, Rob Wiegold from Shard Capital Stockbrokers said “This is a very interesting sector and we feel Immotion have the right management team in place to drive this model forward. There has been significant appetite in the IPO from investors and should the company be able to take advantage of their current pipeline, we see it being a very interesting 12-18 months ahead.”

As virtual and augmented realities become more accessible, there’s no surprise that the industry is seeing exponential growth. The VR industry in the UK alone is set to be worth £353.3 million by 2020, up a staggering 390% as the industry was worth just £46.4 million in 2016. Globally, the AR and VR market is set to hit US$547.2 billion by 2024 across software and hardware technologies.[1]

For more information on Immotion Group, please contact Shard Capital Stockbrokers on 0207 186 9950 / scsb@shardcapital.com

 

Sources

1. Transparency Market Research. 2018. Global Virtual and Augmented Reality Market: Snapshot. [ONLINE] Available at https://www.transperancymarketresearch.com/virtual-augmented-reality-market.html. [Accessed 5 July 2018].

 

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