Tough year for Zynga

Investors showed their disappointment at the latest results of San Francisco-based social gaming developer Zynga Friday, sending the share price into a 16 percent spiral southwards when performance did not meet expectations.

2014 FY revenue fell 21 percent to $690 million, with gaming down 28 percent compared to 2013, and a net loss of $226 million over the year, although revenue from advertising did ameliorate the situation somewhat, rising 34 percent to $153 million.

Drilling down into the fourth quarter numbers, Zynga Casino revenues rose 8 percent on the preceding quarter following a surge in slot activity late in the year, but Zynga Poker revenues fell 7 percent compared to Q3-2014.

Although revenues per daily average user were up an encouraging 31 percent in the last quarter of the year, the effect was muted by the fact that the number of daily average users dropped by 2 million to 25 million, and the number of monthly active users fell 4 million to 112 million, with unique monthly users down 9 million at 71 million.

Zynga’s move to mobile provided a bright spot, with mobile revenues up a commendable 120 percent year-on-year; that’s 60 percent of all revenues now delivered by the mobile channel, and excellent progress on the company’s ambition to have 75 percent of revenues emanating from mobile sources by end 2015.

Company executives have acknowledged that there have been difficulties with the company’s new poker product, and that better results may have been achieved by more stringent and comprehensive testing across consumer segments, geographies and devices, but the fact remains that Zynga Poker continues to command a quarter of the social poker segment; that’s a sound foundation to build on, with plans in progress to expand the Poker Elite product into major Australian, Canadian and Western European markets.

Zynga also conceded that it may have been too hasty in pushing its sports product NFL Showdown into the market, and revealed that it is making improvements to ensure a more complete offering is available later this year.

The Chinese development studio has clearly not been an overwhelming success and is to be closed, saving around $7 million a year.