28 Sep 07

Coolabi announces acquisition of Indie Kids
 
Coolabi plc ('Coolabi' or the 'Company') (COO:L), the AIM-listed media company focused on the ownership and creative management of high quality children's and family intellectual property rights, is pleased to announce that it has acquired Indie Kids Limited and Indie Kids International Limited (together, 'Indie Kids').
 
Initial consideration will be £171,000 with deferred consideration of £129,000 to be paid over the year following completion and a further earn-out, subject to the achievement of certain levels of performance over a three year period, capped at £1,700,000.  It is expected that the acquisition will be earnings enhancing this financial year.
 
Indie Kids is a well established children's television development and production company that has achieved significant success with household name programmes such as The Worst Witch and Fungus the Bogeyman

• The Worst Witch: Based on the popular books by Jill Murphy, Indie Kids have produced 6 series for ITV. The series is distributed by Granada International and has been sold to more than 60 countries.
  
  
• Fungus the Bogeyman: The animated adaptation of Raymond Briggs' well loved book featuring Martin Clunes and Fay Ripley premiered on BBC1 in November 2004 as the number one children's show with over a million viewers aged 5 to 15.

Indie Kids is currently completing a 26 episode animated series of The Large Family based on the Jill Murphy series of books for broadcast by the BBC and TF1 in France later in the autumn of 2007.

In addition the company has the continuing rights to produce further episodes of The Worst Witch and Fungus The Bogeyman together with an exciting portfolio of new productions in development.
 
These assets, coupled with Coolabi's expertise in this area, have the potential to deliver attractive upside.
 
The acquisition is in line with the Company's strategy to build a diversified portfolio of cash-generative intellectual property assets that have international potential across a broad range of media platforms.  As a consequence, acquisitions of this sort are only made where the relevant production company has an existing commission in place with a major UK broadcaster.
 
Welcoming the deal, Coolabi's Chief Executive Jeremy Banks said:
 
'This is a good acquisition for Coolabi and fits perfectly with our stated
acquisition strategy.'

Links: The Large Family, The Large Family on CBeebies, The Worst Witch, Fungus the Bogeyman, Development, Catalogue