King sees cash pile fall by 33% to $661 million as it seeks to bolster share price
Mobile games publisher King (NYSE:KING) has announced its FY15 Q1 financials, for the three months ending 31 March 2015.
GAAP revenues were $570 million, down 6 percent year-on-year, but up 4 percent quarter-on-quarter.
Mobile games accounting for 81 percent of bookings (a slightly different technical measure of sales).
Non-Candy Crush bookings accounted for 62 percent of bookings.
Cash is king
King generated $164 million in profit, up 29 percent, although this was mainly due to foreign exchange gains.
However, it ended the quarter with cash and equivalents of $661 million, down substantially from the $964 million it had 3 months ago.
As well as an expensive acquisition campaign, King has been handing back cash to its shareholders via dividends and also spent $111 million buying back shares during the quarter.
At $14.99, its share price remains well under its IPO launch price of $22.50, though.
More players
At least there was positive news from its player numbers.
Monthly uniques were up quarter-on-quarter to 364 million, while daily active players also rose to 158 million.
King saw a small rebound in the number of monthly unique payers to 8.5 million, and monthly gross bookings per unique payer rose to $23.64.
[source: King]