GiG Grants Key Managerial Staff 1.5M Share Options

Malta-based supplier of technology solutions for the gaming industry Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) issued a grant of 1.5 million share options for key employees, offering them the chance to buy equity in the company within the next 5 years.

Employment at the Time of Exercise

Options which are conditional upon employment at the time of exercise, allow the purchase of common stock at a predefined price, offer partial exercise, 20% after January 1, 2022, 30% after January 1, 2023 and 50% between January 1, 2024 and December 31, 2026 when they will expire, and have a set exercise price of NOK15 per share.

Among the key employees GiG is seeking to keep by offering them the grant scheme are CEO Richard Brown, chief commercial officer Ben Clemes, chief information officer Chris Armes, group financial chief Tore Formo, chief financial officer Justin Psaila, general counsel Claudio Caruana, director of people Claudia Ginex and managing director of media Jonas Warrer, each of them being granted 30,000 options.

The option employment incentive which was approved by GiG shareholders during the Annual General Meeting (AGM) in May 2019 is a common approach for the dual listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Stockholm company.

Share Options Common at GiG

In December 2020, GiG announced it issued 70,000 new shares of common stock related to employees exercising share options during 2019 and 2020, as by the time of the options exercise, the company borrowed shares for the immediate transfer to its employees and the new stock would return the amount borrowed from the lender.

By that time the company increased the amount of issued and outstanding shares within its 100,000,000 authorized shares to 90,075,626, and following the grant, 2,021,000 options are outstanding.

Also in December, GiG raised €8.5 million by issuing subordinated convertible bonds to institutional investors Formue Nord A/S and Symmentry Invest A/S. Bonds that were set to run for 30 months and pay 8% interest annually, have a maturity date of June 28, 2022 and also allow to be converted into common stock at a price of NOK15.

Having climbed more than 60% for the past 12 months which saw the company end white-label agreements and relinquish operator licenses in Sweden and the UK, shares of GiG currently trade at NOK13.32, following the strong third quarter earnings report. In November, the company posted a 78% jump in revenue compared to the same quarter in 2019.