Nearly a year after Nevada regulators approved Brightstar Capital Partners acquiring AGS for $1.1 billion and taking the company private, a company executive said the new arrangement is “going great.”
The deal was announced two years ago between the global gaming supplier of slot, table, and interactive products with Brightstar, the middle-market private-equity firm focused on investing in industrial, manufacturing, and service businesses. The deal that closed in the third quarter of 2025 was expected to grow AGS’s business globally.
A routine corporate clean-up matter was before the Nevada Gaming Commission on Thursday. Kimo Akiona, AGS chief financial officer, appeared before the Commission to give an update on the company. He has been with AGS for 11 years.
Akiona told the Nevada Gaming Control Board that 2025 marked their fifth consecutive revenue and EBITDA growth for the company and hit all-time records.
“On the financial front, the company is doing very well. The momentum continues and our prospects are great,” Akiona said. “We’re at record levels of organic internal investment in the company, primarily in our research and development group and commercial terms. Brightstar has been very supportive. They’re very hands on and are pushing us to accelerate some of the plans we already had in the front of the company.”
Brightstar is a new player in the gaming industry. Apollo Global Management acquired an ownership stake in AGS in 2013 and took it public in 2018, before selling its shares in 2022.
While he didn’t want to say it’s a trend yet, Commission member Brian Krolicki said there seem to be more entities going from the public to the private side of corporate life.
“We need to talk about it,” Krolicki said. “We understand a public company has certain values, but if you don’t utilize those opportunities, perhaps being private is appropriate. Most companies aspire to become public and we’ve seen a couple go dark.”
Akiona agreed that there have been different transactions in the gaming space where companies that were public are going private.
“If you look at the rationale for these transactions, they’re pretty consistent,” Akiona said. “The benefits of being public are you have access to capital markets and can raise money to help support strategic objectives. Sometimes you aren’t fairly rewarded for operating performance. Those are often beyond your control; maybe a sector isn’t in favor of the public market. Or size is a problem. We were a microcap company operating in certain macro environments.”
Akiona said the rationale for AGS going private with Brightstar was about their strategic growth plan. Under the new ownership, they have the same plan, but feel like they can better execute in the private environment.
“We aren’t living in the quarterly cadence where the public markets judge you every 90 days,” Akiona said. “When we’re running this company, we’re trying to make decisions that are in the best interests of our shareholders and owners for the long term. Sometimes those are things like investing in your R&D team, and at times you need to ramp up a new studio. Sometimes costs don’t come into the profit and loss in a way that the public markets might appreciate, but we know for the long-term interest of the company is the right thing to do. The private market is a better environment for a company like ours to be able to organically invest in ourselves to support long-term growth.”
Akiona said they are a North American-centric company and that their business has primarily been in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. Central and South America are huge opportunities, Akiona said in response to a question from Krolicki about interest in Brazil.
“For us, the first phase of that growth will come from selling our slot machines into various markets, primarily through distributors,” Akiona said. “Brazil is a longer-term project we want to be ready for if and when the country goes to Class III regulated gaming. Meanwhile, we’ve been working on different game content and cabinets for that market.”
AGS has more than 1,000 employees, with 150 in Nevada, which serves as the corporate headquarters. Akiona said employees across the company have been unaffected by the acquisition.
“If you look at where the employee head count was at the close of the transaction to today, we’ve actually grown,” Akiona said. “It’s a transaction based on growth and investing in the business. It is not a transaction where we are falling under private equity ownership, and they’re coming in to strip down costs and improve margins and turn the company around. Brightstar as our sponsor is not only bringing the financial backing, but also philosophically if you look at their firm, they are very focused on operational excellence.”
AGS has 23,000 leased machines, primarily in the U.S. and Mexico.
