Zynga’s mobile strategy is showing good results. The number of mobile daily active users grew 7% over the last quarter with Apple emerging as the company’s largest platform partner, overtaking Facebook.
A big transition for Zynga
Apple’s overtaking Facebook as Zynga’s largest platform partner comes as good news for the game maker, which intends to grow and strengthen its presence in the $34.8 billion mobile business with a lot of support from its slots games and other successful games like Words With Friends. This is an important transition for Zynga as its first game only took off on Facebook.
About 60 days ago, the company hired Frank Gibeau of EA’s mobile division as its new chief executive officer.
“Since joining, the biggest surprise for me has been how much operating leverage we have across the company, which we can unlock with improved planning, more focused execution, and cost control,” Gibeau said in a press release.
Explaining further, Gibeau said the company needed to put in place such practices that are more disciplined and consistent and more cross-team collaboration.
“Over the long term, there’s no reason why Zynga’s margins can’t be more in line with its peers,” the executive said.
Another transition going well
On Wednesday, the social gaming company revealed its first quarter results, reporting bookings at $182 million. This not only came in above analysts’ consensus estimate of $162 million but also higher than the company’s projected range of $150 million to $165 million. Though this was similar to last quarter, it represented an 8% increase over the same period last year.
The game maker reported quarterly revenues of $187 million. Transitioning to mobile was not easy. However, it has worked to change this, and now mobile is making up 76% of its bookings at $139 million. This is higher by 31% than the previous year.
Bookings for slots went up 13% over the previous quarter, while for Words with Friends, it went up 60% on a year-over-year basis due to the addition of new features. Zynga is projecting bookings between $160 million and $170 million for the next quarter.
The game maker also has a few games in the pipeline. The racing game SCR2 will be launched in the third quarter, and the strategy game Dawn of Titans will be launched in the fourth quarter. Also, during the second half of the year, Zynga is expected to launch FarmVille: Tropic Escape.
In premarket trading today, Zynga shares were up almost 14%. Year to date, the stock is down by over 18%, while in the last year, it is down almost 7%.
