Ainsworth Game Technology considers life outside the ASX

afr.com:

It has been an unpleasant year for all ASX-listed gaming stocks of almost all persuasions – outside of Aristocrat Leisure – given the increasingly eagle-eyed regulators and reluctance from investors.

One of those has been Aristocrat’s smaller poker machine rival, Ainsworth Game Technology, which trades at a far lower multiple than its larger peer. Now the company appears to be doing something about it, and is in discussions with advisors at Macquarie about setting up a data room to consider whether there’s a suitor that could take it private.

Pokies operators have been hit with increased regulation this year, pushing down the price of gaming stocks. Nick Moir

Of course, there is one obvious party. Novomatic. The Austrian company operates some 2000 gaming facilities, largely under the Admiral Casino brand, around the world. It also owns just over 50 per cent of Ainsworth.

Crucially, Ainsworth chief executive Harald Neumann was an executive at Novomatic before he took the top job at the ASX-listed group. In the United States on Sunday, Neumann declined to comment when contacted.

After Novomatic, Ainsworth’s largest shareholders include Spheria Asset Management, Allan Gray, REST and HESTA. Its founder, Len Ainsworth, hit the jackpot in 2016 after landing a near-$500 million deal when he sold his majority stake to Novomatic in 2016. Ainsworth was also the founder of Aristocrat, which has grown into a $26 billion poker machine giant.

Novomatic’s interest in Ainsworth started in 2013 after Austrian and German authorities began to impose new restrictions on poker machine and casino operators, forcing the company to look offshore for growth.

As The Australian Financial Review reported at the time, Johann Graf, one of Austria’s