Razer CEO to become billionaire with Li Ka-shing backing
SINGAPORE: After raising funds from Asia’s biggest investors, including Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing and Singapore’s Temasek Holdings Pte Ltd, Razer Inc is turning to the market for an initial public offering (IPO) that will make its co-founder Tan Min-Liang a billionaire.
Tan, a Singapore entrepreneur who’s also Razer’s chief executive officer, owns about 42% of the San Francisco-based maker of video gaming accessories such as mice and headsets, together with his family.
Razer is offering more than a tenth of the company to raise at least US$400mil in a Hong Kong IPO, giving Tan a net worth of more than US$1.2bil, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Razer’s plan to list shares comes amid robust growth in the global gaming market, which is expected to reach US$160bil by 2021, a 52% jump from last year, according to data from Euromonitor.
The company said in its prospectus it is one of the world’s three biggest makers of video gaming accessories, citing surveys conducted by gaming research firm Newzoo.
“The gaming industry is a market that’s growing and it has even more growth potential, influenced by external factors such as an increase in household income and time spent on leisure,” said Kyung-il Lee, an analyst at Seoul-based Heungkuk Securities. “Companies making gaming hardware can also benefit from that growth.”
Tan said in an interview earlier this year that Razer had sold US$1bil of products in the past three years and now had 35 million users for a software platform that launched games and connected gamers.
Razer was co-founded in 2005 by Singaporeborn Tan as a maker of computer mice that catered to hardcore gamers around the world. Today, its assortment of gaming accessories from laptops to audio devices, which all bear its distinctive green tri-headed snake logo, are revered among a niche gaming-consumer base.
“While gaming has had many happy times for me, gaming has gotten me through some of my saddest times,” Tan, 39, said in a Facebook post in August. An external spokeswoman for the company said Tan declined to comment on his net worth.
Tan made the news in August when he tweeted a pitch to Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, offering to set up an electronic-payment system for the city-state within 18 months. After sending his proposal two weeks later, he received more than 200 applicants.
Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd, Chinese property developer Kingkey Group, and an investment fund controlled by Indonesian clove-cigarette billionaire Budi Hartono are among firms that have committed to buying a total of about US$153mil of Razer’s offering as cornerstone investors.
The company’s other shareholders also include Intel Capital and Lee Hsien Yang, the younger brother of Singapore’s prime minister.