Making a mint
King of Candy Crush in half-bil IPO
CANDY CRUSH is looking to crush it on Wall Street.
King Digital Entertainment, the company behind the addictive mobile phone game Candy Crush Saga, is planning to raise $500 million in an initial public offering that would potentially value the company at more than $5 billion. King, which filed a preliminary prospectus, didn’t disclose how many shares it plans to sell or the share price.
The filing lifts the curtain on the growth of King’s flagship game, which accounts for the lion’s share of the company’s sales and profits and has an average of 93 million users a day.
King generated $1.9 billion in revenue last year — 11 times what the company had in 2012.
Its adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization was $825 million in 2013, up from $28.5 million in 2012.
“It’s staggering,” Adam Krejcik, an analyst at Eilers Research, told the Daily News. “I don’t believe there has been a social, free-toplay, game that has generated the magnitude of revenues and profits as Candy Crush Saga has in 2013.”
But potential investors might be worried that the game, which has players moving candies to make a line of three in the same color, can keep up its impressive pace.
Bookings for the company declined in the fourth quarter as demand for Candy Crush waned.