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Talenthouse acquires Coolabi; plans on-stop financial app for creator economy

Since Talenthouse completed the acquisition of Coolabi who cover several lucrative markets including UK, US and China, both businesses are strategically working together to deepen Talenthouse's proposition within the Creator Economy space and diversify its offering amidst an unsteady market.

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With market conditions looking to continue in a period of instability across the world, Creatives are even more challenged in securing opportunities for paid work and visibility in front of brands. Talenthouse seeks to provide further work for Creators on its platform with the increased opportunities deriving from Coolabi.

The acquisition is a pivotal moment for the Creator Economy space that Talenthouse lives in. IP for children and young adults (YA) is in high demand as nostalgia content increases in popularity across books, television and films appealing to Millennials and Gen Z demographics who are repurposing 'old school' content to amass huge followings on social media.

The Creator Economy is truly thriving in 2022, with more than 303 million people around the world now considering themselves to be creators. It is not limited to social media influencers and YouTubers - it is a global phenomenon of working creative professionals. The best study on the number of creators globally is from Adobe issued in August 2022. Adobe estimates these 303 million creators are across nine key markets that they surveyed, and less than 15% of those are influencers. It is estimated to be worth in excess of $2.8 trillion and is heavily driven by digital advertising needs; the market is vast and growing.

Coolabi Group has created and licensed to publishers over 2,000 book titles across some 200 book series to publishers and actively manages the intellectual property it creates in order for it to achieve international recognition and commercial success as brands. For example, Warrior Cats has so far been played 200 million times on Roblox by some 2 million unique users a month and has been viewed on YouTube over half a billion times all just in the last year. In addition, Coolabi's books are licensed in over 40 languages and its award-winning TV shows are licensed in over 140 countries.

Clare McKeeve, CEO of Talenthouse AG, comments: "The creators of the future are embodied in Coolabi's extensive fan base, including Gen Z and Gen Alpha. Their influence, creativity and engagement will future proof the evolution of Talenthouse's membership base and its reach to partners and customers alike, opening up avenues for our creatives to augment their content creation model.

The team is thrilled to welcome Jeremy Banks and the Coolabi team into the Talenthouse family and combine their content generation capabilities and younger audience reach to supplement the 18 million members within Talenthouse's community. We strongly believe that the acquisition will result in new routes to market and maximise our potential within existing international markets."

Jeremy Banks, CEO of Coolabi, comments: "Talenthouse boasts an engaged community of diverse creative talent from all over the world, which perfectly aligns with the ambitions and missions we have at Coolabi. This acquisition brings both of our powerful businesses and communities together to enable the creation of more stories, platforms and content that excites and resonates with people across the globe. We're so pleased to be joining Clare and her team."

About the acquisition of Coolabi

Having acquired an initial 33% shareholding in Coolabi in 2021, Talenthouse has acquired the remaining 67% and now owns 100% of the share capital of Coolabi. The completion was made possible by the use of new debt facilities from Kartesia, our institutional partner, to refinance the existing vendor loans.

Coolabi has been consistently EBITDA positive for several years and is expected to remain so for 2022, and its business model allows it to create content at minimal investment cost.

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