What Destroyed Zynga Earnings in Q4

Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ: ZNGA) reported its fourth-quarter financial results after the markets closed on Wednesday. The company had no earnings and $186 million in revenue. The Thomson Reuters’ consensus estimates had called for no earnings on $178.67 million in revenue. In the same period of the previous year, Zynga reported no earnings and $182.35 in revenue.

In the fourth quarter, bookings totaled $182 million, which was above the high end of the guidance range but flat year over year and up 3% sequentially. Mobile bookings were $134 million, or 73% of overall bookings, up 21% year over year and up 10% sequentially.

Zynga also announced its first quarter acquisition of Zindagi Games. Zindagi is made up of world-class engineers, game designers, product managers and artists who have delivered high-quality games with small teams.

Average daily active users totaled 18 million, with 15 million coming from mobile. Average monthly active users totaled 68 million, with 55 million coming from mobile. Note that both of these numbers are lower than the same period from the previous year, as well as sequentially.
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Mark Pincus, CEO and founder of Zynga, commented on earnings:

In terms of our financial scorecard, for 2015, we made good progress in our transition to mobile on a bookings level but, due to the lack of significant new releases, we saw an overall decline in our audience. While our total bookings grew 1%, our core live mobile franchises – Slots, Words With Friends and Poker – were up 63% and all of mobile grew 35%. We ended the year with mobile now representing 73% of total bookings up from 60% in Q4 2014. We saw our web business continue to decline with bookings down 32% and audience down 53%. Overall for the year, we managed to support a relatively large slate of new game development and user acquisition while remaining profitable.

On the books, the company had $987 million in cash, equivalents and marketable securities.

Shares of Zynga were trading down 14% at $1.83 early Thursday, with a consensus analyst price target of $3.21 and a 52-week trading range of $1.78 to $3.13.