Zynga Inc. (Nasdaq:ZNGA), a leading social game developer, today announced financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2014.
“In Q1 our teams delivered a solid start to the year against our strategic frame of growing and sustaining our franchises, creating new hits and driving efficiencies. We have established a strong base for 2014 and believe we are pacing well for a year of growth,” said Don Mattrick, CEO Zynga. “For the first time in two years, our teams delivered sequential growth across our key performance metrics including bookings, Adjusted EBITDA, mobile bookings mix and audience. We believe these indicators demonstrate our strategy is working and the focus, rigor and discipline of our teams is showing up in our results.
“I am particularly proud of the FarmVille team’s commitment to franchise growth, especially as it relates to last week’s worldwide launch of FarmVille 2: Country Escape. Since the launch, we have seen more than 4 million installs of the game and received great feedback from our players. We are pleased with the team’s execution and encouraged by the early indicators we are seeing.”
Recent Business Highlights:
– Generated bookings of $161 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $14 million, outperforming high end of previous outlook range
– Achieved sequential growth across bookings, adjusted EBITDA, audience and mobile bookings mix for first time in 2 years
– Delivered double digit mobile audience growth at 11 percent quarter over quarter across monthly active users and 10 percent across daily active users, excluding the NaturalMotion acquisition
– Completed acquisition of leading mobile game and technology developer, NaturalMotion, expanding Zynga’s creative pipeline, accelerating its planned mobile growth and bringing in next-generation technology and tools
– Implemented global workforce reduction and closure of datacenter facilities as part of an overall plan to reduce its long-term cost structure
Recent Product Highlights:
– Zynga Poker achieved sequential quarterly growth in bookings for the first time in 7 quarters, growing its mobile audience by 19 percent and posting its strongest mobile audience growth in the last 2 years
– Zynga’s Words With Friends franchise grew monthly audience by 8 percent and daily active users by 9 percent quarter over quarter, and grew bookings 43 percent year over year
– Expanded free-to-play social slots product portfolio with the mobile-first launch of Riches of Olympus on iOS
– Launched FarmVille 2: Country Escape in 16 languages across iOS and Android on April 17, 2014. At launch, the game received Apple App Store “Editor’s Choice” featuring in 155 countries and Google Play top tier featuring in 71 countries