Company overview

Founded in 1999, Alawar Entertainment is a leading international publisher and distributor of casual games. The company's catalog contains over 200 PC products, including the Farm Frenzy™, Treasures of Montezuma™, Natalie Brooks™, Magic Encyclopedia™ and Craze™ titles, among others. Alawar's games are available on the PC, iPhone, iPad, PlayStation 3, Nintendo DS, Mac, Android, Symbian, BlackBerry and bada platforms. The company also releases entertainment products for social networks and MMO audiences.

Alawar owns five internal studios: Alawar Stargaze, Alawar DreamDale, Alawar Five-BN, Alawar Friday's Games and Alawar Southpoint. In addition, the company works with over 30 independent development teams, providing them with a comprehensive range of publishing services that cover every step of the game creation process — from production to release.

Alawar intends to become one of the largest international suppliers of casual gaming content and to expand the concept beyond traditional downloadable PC games to multi-platform titles created for a mass audience. To accomplish this, the company will expand its current operations and build on its present success, both of which are described in the following paragraphs:

To date, Alawar's PC games are available to users in more than 60 countries. Moreover, the company cooperates with several key online distributors, such as RealNetworks, Oberon Media, Big Fish Games, Yahoo! Games, AOL, Amazon, iWIN, Boonty, Exent, Shockwave and others, to release its products to hundreds of thousands of potential users. Also, in 2009, Alawar began porting its bestsellers to new platforms, and to date has released several games that are popular among users who shop on the App Store, Ovi Store, Android Market and PlayStation Network.

In addition to its publishing activities, Alawar has been building its own distribution network for casual PC games since 2004. The company currently owns five Internet portals (www.alawar.com, www.alawar.ru,www.alawar.de, www.alawar.pl and www.alawar.co.il) and is working to popularize its affiliate program, a revenue-sharing business through which affiliates can make money by selling Alawar's products online. The turnkey software solution allows any website to quickly launch a casual games store and begin earning a commission on every game it sells.

Alawar was one of the first companies to sell casual games in Russia, and as such controls more than 70 percent of the market in that country (according to research iKS-Consulting published in 2009). What's more, the company was awarded the Runet Prize for its contribution to the development of the Russian Internet. Also, Alawar's Russian language game portal, www.alawar.ru, won first place in the Entertainment Portals and Sites category of Golden Site, a Russian Internet contest, and received a prize in the Online Store category.

Alawar is also launching its distribution network in a number of European and Asian countries due to the successful execution of its affiliate program elsewhere. At present, the program boasts affiliate relationships with over 500 leading websites in Russia, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, Finland, Sweden, Israel and other countries.

In August 2007, FINAM holding purchased a minority share of Alawar's stock. The investment was used to develop new products and distribution techniques as well as step up the company's activities on the Russian market.

From 2008-2009, Alawar further strengthened its position as the leading distributor of casual games on the Russian Internet, and published over 60 titles for various platforms, including the PC, Mac™, iPhone®, PlayStation™ 3, Nintendo DS®, Android® and J2ME. The company's market value increased 4.5 times over a period of two-and-a-half years, and its average annual revenue growth rate over the past three years was 120 percent.

In February 2010, Alawar, Almaz Capital Russia Fund I (also known as Almaz Capital/Cisco Russia Fund I) and FINAM holding signed an agreement that allowed Almaz Capital Partners to purchase FINAM's minority share and become the owner of 23 percent of Alawar's stock.