This afternoon following the bell, Zynga reported its calendar first-quarter financial performance including revenue of $168 million, bookings (non-GAAP) of $161 million, and earnings per share of -$0.01 (non-GAAP). Analysts had expected the company to report top line of $164 million, and a single cent per-share loss.
That revenue figure is a decline of 36 percent from the year-ago quarter. The company’s GAAP net loss of $61 in the quarter contrasts with a $4 million first-quarter 2013 profit. The company endured restructuring costs during the period.
In regular trading, Zynga fell around 2 percent. In after-hours trading following its earnings report, Zynga is up more than 4 percent.
The company indicated that its founder Mark Pincus will step down from his “operational role as Chief Product Officer at Zynga to focus on serving in his role as Chairman of the Board of Directors.” This clears the deck for new CEO Don Mattrick to have a firmer grip in the till.
The company reported that its average bookings per daily active user, or ABPU, rose to $0.063 from $0.049 in the year-ago period. Total monthly active payers, a key metric, were 1.4 million in the first quarter, down from the year-ago figure of 2.5 million.
Zynga is a company in transition, with declining revenues as its older games that drove it to the public markets obsolesce. Rounds of layoffs have taken place, and a new CEO was installed. The question is whether Zynga can survive and thrive in the mobile gaming world when it was born atop Facebook’s platform that has since lost ascendancy.
For the current quarter, Zynga expects revenue of between $140 million and $160 million, and a net loss of between $75 million and $65 million. For the full year, the company anticipates bookings between $770 million and $810 million, and a minor non-GAAP per-share profit.
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