US web and mobile game publisher Zynga (NASDAQ:ZNGA) has announced its FY14 financials, for the 12 months ending 31 December 2014.

This was the first year that included revenue from acquisition NaturalMotion.

GAAP revenue was $690 million, down 21 percent compared to 2013.

Zynga made a loss of $45 million, compared to a loss of $37 million during 2013.

The company ended the quarter with cash and short-term securities worth $1.15 billion.

Mobile majority

"2014 was a year of progress for Zynga - we came together as one team and applied more discipline and rigor to our business," said CEO Don Mattrick.

"In the fourth quarter, we increased mobile bookings to 60% of our total bookings mix, expanded our mobile audience with monthly mobile consumers up 87% year over year, and grew our core franchise bookings by 35% year over year,"

Indeed, looking at Q4, revenue was $193 million, up 9 percent year-on-year, although Zynga still made a loss of $2.5 million.

That compares to a loss of $21 million in Q4 2013.

Mobile bookings were up in Q4 by 120 percent year-on-year and 14 percent quarter-on-quarter.

Zynga had 80 million monthly active players in Q4, compared to 28 million monthly active web players.

Being bold

Given the weakness of F2P on web, becoming more mobile is a key goal for Zynga during 2015.

Mobile bookings represented 60 percent of total bookings during Q4, up from 34 percent in Q4 2013.

Mattrick commented that Zynga would "deliver a 100 percent mobile-first new product slate featuring new games, with a goal of ending 2015 with more than 75% of our fourth quarter bookings coming from mobile.

"I am excited by the boldness of our 2015 product aspirations - this year we expect to launch between 6 to 10 new games in important categories like match-3 and action strategy."

The company also announced it was closing down its China studio with the loss of 71 jobs. The move will save Zynga $7 million a year in costs. 

Fewer players

However, a key problem for Zynga to address as it goes mobile is the continued decline of its audience.

Monthly active players were down 4 percent quarter-on-quarter to 108 million, daily actives were down 4 percent to 25 million, and monthly unique payers were down 15 percent to 1.1 million.

The only good news is that average daily bookings per average DAU is up, 8 percent quarter-on-quarter to $0.08.

[source: Zynga]