Sugar crush!!! That was not the sound heard by investors and those who had vested interests in the King Digital IPO that went public just this morning. King Digital, the major company behind the popular hit match three title Candy Crush Saga, debuted their Initial Public Offering this morning on Wall Street at the NYSE under the stock symbol KING, yet for its first day it did considerably worse than most people hoped. Those at King as well as investors were surely shocked when they found that King’s IPO fell from its initial per-share price of $22.50, to $18.90 which is just over three and a half dollars($3.60). King was the largest American Tech IPO since Twitter went public in November, but they were also the worst debut IPO that was valued at over $500 million in the last fifteen years.
Candy Crush Saga currently has between 1oo million and 500 million download and installs, which is a staggering number for any app or game. It’s surprising to see that an IPO from a company that has product that does so well, could have a stock price plummet and do so bad. However some might have seen this coming as Candy Crush Saga is really the only phenomenally popular game from King Digital out of the 180 that it offers. Candy Crush Saga alone made up more than three-quarters of King’s revenues from the last three months of 2013, which just goes to show you how much money it really made the company, but also puts into perspective how heavily they relied on Candy Crush to take their IPO to the top.
Although they had a less than desirable performance in the stock exchange for their very first day, King’s CFO Hope Cochran says that for them, it wasn’t about today, that it’s actually about the long term goals and what they will do over the course of years to come. King’s main goal is to focus on having a stable group of global franchises, rather than focus on one major franchise like Candy Crush Saga by itself. This may not mean anything to any of our readers,(unless you had a substantial amount of purchased shares in King Digital stock you bought this morning)so we think it’s safe to go back to just playing Candy Crush, rather than worry more about how well their stock is going to do. Work those high scores!