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Glu Mobile steps closer to profitability as it cuts losses to $0.3 million in Q3 2018

The result is a significant step up from an $11.7 million loss in the same period last year

Glu Mobile steps closer to profitability as it cuts losses to $0.3 million in Q3 2018

Design Home developer Glu Mobile narrowly missed making a profit in Q3 as it posted a $0.3 million loss for the quarter.

Revenue for the three months ending September 30th increased by 22 per cent year-over-year to reach $99.3 million. Bookings increased 17.5 per cent year-over-year, hitting $100.7 million.

79 per cent of bookings came from three titles - Design Home, Tap Sports Baseball and Covet Fashion. Design Home led the charge, earning $114 million in 2018 so far.

In less good news, Glu revealed it cancelled the soft-launched Titan World, resulting in a $2.7 million write-off and the closure of the Dairy Free studio.

"Our strong top-line marks our seventh consecutive quarter of reporting improved year over year bookings growth," said Glu Mobile COO and CFO Eric Ludwig in a statement.

"This accomplishment reflects our decision to pivot away from celebrity titles and focus our resources on growth games that can grow bookings year over year while generating sustainable profitability and free cash flow."

Grow up

Glu noted to investors that it was seeing an increasing gap between those three growth games and its evergreen and legacy titles. MAUs and DAUs for games like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood have experienced a decline over the last 12 months.

Ludwig continued: "I think most of our declines in the MAU and the DAU over the last 12 months have come from the degradation of the catalogue titles, catalogue being both the evergreens and the legacy titles, which, if you look at our average bookings per daily active user, we're at $0.32 this quarter.

"All of our three Growth games are above that average. All of our evergreen and catalogue titles are kind of below that average, and it really is [decline] from the titles on DAU and MAU.

“I believe we are about up 100,000 daily actives from the core growth games on a year-over-year basis. So it really is a tale of two halves."

Glu plans to launch three new “growth” games in 2019 - Diner Dash Town, WWE: Universe and a currently unnamed project with Disney.


Staff Writer

Natalie Clayton is an Edinburgh-based freelance writer and game developer. Besides PCGamesInsider and Pocketgamer.biz, she's written across the games media landscape and was named in the 2018 GamesIndustry.biz 100 Rising Star list.