If you are wondering why Zynga issued $8.5 million in convertible notes by the end of 2020, CEO Frank Gibeau said the company was raising funds to build a “war chest” for further acquisitions. “As you know, we’ve been consolidating inside this business for a while and we’ll continue to bring great companies, great cultures, great teams [finders] to crime that we can bring to Zynga,” Gibeau told me.
In the last year alone, Zynga acquired two Istanbul-based game studios – Peak Games for 1.6 billion and Rollic for $180 million (in the latter case it only acquired 60% of the company). “We now have four or five examples of how this has been done successfully,” Gibeau said. “No one was picking up our phone calls when we started. Now when we call, we are a somewhat preferred destination for lots of developers out there.”
Gibeau and I were talking about Ginger’s fourth-quarter earnings, with the company talking about an all-time high of $616 million and a net loss of $53 million (although another measure of profit, the adjusted EBITDA, was actually positive at $90 million). Daily active users grew 77% year-over-year to 36 million, and monthly active users grew 103% to 134 million.
Looking ahead, Zynga is forecasting revenue of $2.6 billion for 2021 (32%-year-on-year growth) and $450 Puzzle Combat puts out new games in 2021, including Farmville 3 and a Star Wars title. The company plans to continue developing hypercasual games, develop more cross-platform games, expand internationally and build its ad network – in fact, he suggested that Apple’s upcoming privacy changes could be good for Zynga.
Million, comprising EBITDA, In addition, another acquisition could significantly boost the business, Gibeau noted, noting that the company’s forecast is “no acquisition”, adding, “We’re in a great position, because we would like to acquire in 2021, but we have to make a deal.”No.”
“Lots of traditional thematic marketing services aren’t being able to survive very well,” he said. “Since we are a first-party data company, all the data we generate comes from our games to our services – and because we have enough … IDFA is an opportunity for our company.”
