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GREE predicts over $2 billion in FY12 sales, as Q2 sales rise 190% to $540 million

Global social mobile gaming explosion continues

GREE predicts over $2 billion in FY12 sales, as Q2 sales rise 190% to $540 million
Japanese social mobile company GREE (TYO:3632) has announced its Q2 FY12 financials for the 3 months ending December 31.

Net sales were ¥41.5 billion (around $540 million), up 190 percent year-on-year.

Net income was ¥12.7 billion (around $165 million), up 206 percent.

Powering ahead

The company pointed to strong growth with 'paid services' up 39 percent quarter-on-quarter to ¥38.3 billion (around $500 million).

Advertisements were up 10.5 percent sequentially, to ¥3.2 billion (around $41 million).

GREE's aggressive global expansion - it now has nine office locations - increased costs considerably, but sales increased faster, giving GREE another quarter of historical highs.



Away from home

In terms of its user reach, the combined total of GREE in Japan and OpenFeint in North America and Europe was 189 million, up 8.6 percent compared to the previously quarter.

The majority of this growth came from outside Japan, while domestically, subscriber numbers were only up 1.4 percent quarter-on-quarter to 28.9 million.

Big day coming

In terms of overall FY12 sales, GREE expects to have net sales up around 250 percent to between ¥160-170 billion (around $2.2 billion), and net income, also up around 250 percent, to between ¥44-55 billion (around $650 million).

This is up from its previous sales upgrade in October.

In part, this is depends on the company successfully launching the new global, single sign-on version of its social mobile platform - effectively a combination of GREE Japan and OpenFeint.

This will launch with 12 first party and 12 third party games.

The company ended the quarter with cash and cash equivalents of ¥31.6 billion (around $410 million) and total current assets of ¥84.9 billion (around $1.1 billion), up 129 percent year-on-year.

[source: GREE IR/PDF]
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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.