King Loses Paying Players

The authors of Candy Crush and Bubble Witch reported to investors last year. Despite the release of Candy Crush Soda Saga and aggressive advertising during the Christmas season, the British continue to lose paying users.

The situation can be seen more clearly in the financial results of the fourth quarter, published together with the annual report. But first, a small clarification. As a basis, we took Non-GAAP indicators, the revenues in which are called Gross Booking and take into account the entire amount spent by players during the specified period in the company’s projects. Adjusted Profit is taken as a profit indicator, which also takes into account social security expenses, acquisition expenses and depreciation. By the way, we are doing this for the first time in relation to King’s financial statements, since we used to start from GAAP indicators.

You can read about the differences between Non-GAAP and GAAP here. Note only that Non-GAAP is considered by each company individually.

So, King’s revenues in the fourth quarter amounted to $586.3 million. This is $45.3 million less than in the same period a year ago and $42.4 million more than a quarter earlier. Candy Crush Saga accounted for $262 million.

The company’s profit in the fourth quarter was $184.2 million. This is $20.7 million less than a year ago and only $6.8 million more than a quarter earlier.

In other words, with a much larger estimated advertising budget than in the third quarter, the company earned marginally more.

As for other key metrics,:

• DAU – 149 million (25 million more than a year ago, 12 million more than a quarter ago)
• MAU – 544 million (125 million more than a year ago, 38 million more than a quarter ago)
• MUU – 356 million (52 million more than a year ago, 8 million more than a quarter ago)
• MUP – 8.3 million (3.2 million less than a year ago, 0.3 million less than a quarter ago)
  In general, the company earned $2.3 billion for the year against last year’s $1.9 billion.

Profit also increased: from $647.2 million to $737.8 million. But here we must understand that the first two quarters were the key ones.

During all this time, the company has released 5 mobile projects and 3 social ones. Of the five mobile phones, four entered the US box office Top 15.

The figures show that the company is not in trouble. The question is how long the current recession will last (and whether it will stop at all). Perhaps it is related to the diversification of risks carried out by the company in relation to its own titles. In favor of this, by the way, the purchase of companies focused on the creation of midcore projects also speaks. But whether the company, famous for casual products, will be able to effectively show itself in a new niche for itself is a big question.

The full version of the investment report can be read here.

King, a company that started in the segment of casual and flash games for PC, thanks to the success of the Saga series projects on Facebook and mobile platforms, in a couple of years has turned into one of the most successful global game studios with a DAU of more than 149 million.