Even with the massive success of Candy Crush Saga and Farm Heroes Saga on the mobile front, King isn’t exactly raking in the money that it was hoping to.
The company released its second quarterly earnings report, showing that its growth has been stunted a bit. The company posted revenues up 30 percent on a year-over-year basis to $593.6 million, with net income up 31 percent to $165.4 million. However, that’s quite a dip from the previous quarter, where revenues and profit were up 195 percent and 142 percent, respectively. Crucially, King missed its estimates, something investors hate to see.
While the numbers are solid, they were below the company’s expectations, mainly because of reduced gross bookings from the popular Candy Crush Saga. Now, the company believes its full-year bookings will come in and around $2.25 to $2.35 billion. Part of what has concerned investors is the drop in the company’s audience, which is down to 10.4 million from 11.8 million last quarter.
As a result of this news, the company’s stock took a big hit, with a 22 percent drop to $14.14.
With that, King wants to spread out a little bit in its gaming domain, and not just rely on the success of social hits like Candy Crush. So, it has managed to acquire Heroes of Honor developer Nonstop Games. Such a move will allow it to expand its gaming repertoire, since Nonstop specializes in “mobile and tablet games made for gamers,” with a focus on multiplayer action and strategy. King awarded the studio $16 million, with $10 million guaranteed to keep employees from losing jobs. An additional $84 million will also be supplied, should Nonstop meet certain revenue targets.
There’s no word yet what games King has in mind for Nonstop to release, but, again, they’ll focus more on a diverse crowd than previous releases from the company have done. It’ll certainly shake up the mobile scene, but now it’s just a matter of seeing how it’ll profit for the publisher in the long run.
Source: GamesIndustry International, Gamasutra
