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King sees cash pile fall by 33% to $661 million as it seeks to bolster share price

Sales steady

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]

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.