When Star Citizen finally elected to post its 2022 financial report to the UK government (and in related reporting since), you might have seen some people in the comments shout, “CALDERS CALDERS CALDERS!” like they’re trying to summon forth the Candyman. Those calls aren’t by accident, as additional reading and untying of the report has found important details about what CIG’s investors board looks like – and what those investors expect in return.
The Calders in question are Clive and Keith Calder, who invested in CIG in 2018 and 2020; there are obviously other “minority investors” as well, and Chris Roberts maintains majority stake in the company and its investor board, but the Calders represent around 85% of the minority investors’ interest.
As fellow blogger The Nosy Gamer points out, the 2022 report provides further context about the value of the put option – aka the option to sell “a specified amount of an underlying security at a predetermined price within a specified time frame” – the investor group can expect. In the case of the Calders, they have until March 2025 to exercise the option, or all investors could wait until 2028 to cash out, which would see an ROI of about $130M at the stated six to seven per cent interest value of their initial purchase price.
What this ultimately means for CIG is explained in the report, which admits the company does not have the cash to pay off investors at the moment:
“Another reason for not recognizing is due to the nature of the put terms, as if exercised the put proceeds would be payable out of available cash in excess of that required to effectively operate the business and thus that liability would remain undischarged until such available cash became available.”
In other words, assuming pre-orders of Squadron 42 are announced during this year’s CitizenCon, and assuming that the game is priced at $70 a copy, CIG would have to sell roughly four million copies in order to successfully pay off the investors.
