Light & Wonder Stock Jumps After Snapping Up Grover Gaming’s Charitable Assets: Retail Sentiment Lags

Light & Wonder Inc. (LNW) stock rose 4.06% in after-hours trading on Tuesday as the company agreed to acquire the charitable gaming assets of Grover Gaming Inc. and G2 Gaming Inc. for $850 million in cash, but retail sentiment slipped.

Under the agreement, Light & Wonder will pay a four-year revenue-based earn-out of up to $200 million cash. The purchase price amounts to a 7.7x multiple based on Grover’s 2024 adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization.

Grover Charitable Gaming, which has “long-standing” relationships with charitable customers in the states where it operates, reported revenue of $135 million and adjusted EBITDA of $111 million for the year ended December 31, 2024.

The transaction is expected to close during the second quarter of 2025. Light & Wonder plans to fund the acquisition with existing cash and incremental debt financing.

“Grover Gaming is a leading player in charitable gaming, a category that has experienced significant growth in recent years,” said Matt Wilson, President and CEO of Light & Wonder. “This transaction complements our position as the leading cross-platform global games company by adding another compelling regulated adjacency to our profile.”

The deal also complements Light & Wonder’s cross-platform strategy in addition to being highly accretive to “value and earnings with high-single digit” adjusted net operating profit after tax per share accretion in the first full calendar year after the acquisition,  the company said.

Sentiment on Stocktwits was ‘bearish’ from ‘ bullish’ a day ago. Message volume was in the ‘low’ zone.

Light & Wonder, a cross-platform global games company, has over 6,000 members.

For its next quarterly earnings, the company is expected to post earnings per share of $0.89
on estimated revenue of $799.17 million, according to Stocktwits data.

Light & Wonder stock is up 17% year-to-date.

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