Review on F-1 Registration of King Digital Entertainment

Form F-1 Registration Statement

The social games company ”KING DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT”, most famous for Candy Crush Saga, earlier filed a Form F-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), with a view towards selling ordinary shares. It’s worth noting here that the number of shares, and the price range for the IPO have yet to be finalized, but King says it will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol ‘KING’.

Click here to check registration statement.

King Digital Entertainment, filed on February 18, 2014 for an initial public offering in the United States. But prospective investors may be wary that players may be tiring of paying to line up shiny virtual pieces of sugar.

While King’s preliminary prospectus gave a preliminary $500 million fund-raising target to determine registration fees, the company is expected to seek a multibillion-dollar valuation. It confidentially filed for an I.P.O. last year.

King is the latest in a growing number of European social gaming companies that have become global champions.

Why does King do so?

The hype train is about to make a stop just before it derails. At this particular intersection, knowing investors will stroll off, unknowing investors will stroll on. There will even be some that know it will derails yet get on anyways in light of the fact that they plan to jump off simply before effect.

For everybody that does get on, they have each reason on the planet to keep building up their freshly discovered financing.  For everybody that gets off, they would prefer not to be uncovered for knowing simply notably more than the general crowded. Abusive casual games were great up until the end user mindset begins to understand the tricks.

Assuming that you take a gander at Las Vegas over the previous decade, you’ll recognize a monstrous movement far from opening machines. The floors are much emptier. Tables are more conspicuous and they are focusing on more youthful swarms now. Individuals have deduced that opening machines are not very great for them.

Causal games which push injurious mechanics will just keep going so long until individuals deduce it. At the same time in this versatile industry, you don’t have gaming regulations keeping down the crowds of individuals looking to profit. Cool diversion mechanics are not difficult to make, simple to duplicate, and simple to look after.

The accurate worth of King.com and other cool game titans is bank roll. King.com can offer and out offer any competitor. They spend a huge amount of money acquiring users.

“According to financial information shared in its IPO filing, the company pulled in $568 million in profit off of $1.9 billion in total revenue last year. In 2012, the year Candy Crush Saga was introduced, King generated $164 million in revenue and $7.8 million in profit.” Source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/gaming/2014/02/18/king-ipo/5573691

Using $1,400,000,000 dollars on building and overhead? Nope. Those are promoting dollars used on user acquisitions. In 2013, they made $1.9 billion, however used about $1.4 billion of that on promotions and installations campaigns. That is an enormous total of cash that traded hands and was not held – on a non-physical item.

User obtaining cost on for every user is on the ascent. Normal income for every user is dropping.

Candy Crush Saga is one game. Their latest game Pet Rescue is not doing as good as Candy Crush. They were unable to move their user base into another addictive product. This might result in dread for me as an investor in the gaming business.

Let’s be specific:

• Candy Crush is a simple game.
• Everyone can/is replicating the mechanics.
• User obtaining is going up.
• Average income for every user is dropping.
• They have used over $1.4 billion dollars to push their product.
• There are not many individuals that have NOT become aware of Candy Crush Saga in the prime markets (US, Canada, UK, Japan, France, etc…)
• Pet Rescue doesn’t appear to be a huge hit, nor is any other of their game.
• Large risk for unrepeatability.

King.com’s massive bank roll took benefits of the fact that the advertising knowledge for implementation was reasonably unknown to the public at the time. Today, user acquisitions models are discussed openly like a subprime panic of what/how to do better than your competitor.

Notwithstanding individuals know how to duplicate a straightforward game and they likewise saw what-how the showcasing was carried out to get users. Additionally, there are a few individuals looking to make their unique King.com. This, added to the way that user acquisitions are an offering methodology, makes it appear to be even less inviting.

2014 will be an extraordinary year for promotion benefits that guarantee user acquisition. Game with injurious mechanics necessity to do something else, they need to work on better user acquisition targeting to avoid competing with mega spenders like King.