Animoca Brands allowed deadline extension for filing results

Metaverse heavyweight Animoca Brands has been allowed an extension to file its audited financial report for 2020, which was originally due to Australian regulators by the end of 2022. 

The formerly listed firm negotiated a later filing date, pushing its new deadline to the end of the first quarter with subsequent years' accounts to be filed later in 2023, the company said.

“We do not expect to miss our filing deadlines — as of right now we are on track for the schedule agreed upon with ASIC, our regulator with whom we are working closely," said Animoca's chief communications officer, Ibrahim El Mouelhy, in an emailed statement. 

As has previously been shown by centralized exchanges including Binance and Kraken, auditing crypto firms is no mean feat. Like Binance, in order to complete its 2019 accounts, Animoca was forced to look for a new auditor ahead of its most recent filing, bringing in DFK International for the job.

Those audited 2019 accounts were eventually filed in July. In a statement within the report, Animoca chair Yat Siu said the company's "financial auditing process required breaking entire swathes of new ground," tackling questions about how to account for token sales and NFTs. 

"When confronted with uncertainties in accounting processes, it is typical to look at how other companies address similar challenges. But there were no other companies to which we could compare ourselves. Animoca Brands is, at least for the time being, a unique and special case," he said. 

Animoca was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) from 2015 to 2020. In December 2019, ASX issued a letter to Animoca with a list of breaches, including governance items, involvement in crypto-related activities and substantial use of SAFEs issued by subsidiaries.

After the ASX delisting, Animoca noted that the company “intends to pursue an initial public offering on another exchange as soon as practicable."

Since delisting, it has closed a number of headline-grabbing fundraises and doubled down on its crypto investing with a seemingly endless pipeline of deals. Its hundreds of bets include The Sandbox, Dapper Labs and Star Atlas. The company made more than 60 investments in the first half of this year, and had made more than 380 investments in total as of Dec. 6.

But whatever the accounting issues Animoca has faced, there is no question that the company's token holdings will have taken a hit in value this year, alongside a broader downturn. In an investor update for the period ending April 30, Animoca reported digital asset reserves of about $4.2 billion held in Animoca tokens sand, quidd, primate, revv, tower, gmee and others. A simple analysis of those tokens' prices shows an average decline of more than 80% over the past year, according to CoinGecko data.