Zynga may not be the revenue-generating powerhouse it once was, but that hasn't stopped the company from continuing to invest its cash into even more acquisitions. Amid an earnings report today, the company announced that it was spending $527 million in cash and stock to acquire UK-based mobile game maker NaturalMotion, the creator of hit mobile titles Clumsy Ninja and CSR Racing.
Apple followers may remember Clumsy Ninja as a highlight of Apple's September 2012 keynote event, used to show off the power of the A5 processor. The odd, impressively animated game was finally released for iOS devices last November, over a year after the demo, and racked up over 10 million iOS downloads in a single week.
The NaturalMotion purchase is Zynga's biggest acquisition yet, easily surpassing the reported $200 million purchase of Draw Something maker OMGPOP in 2012. Yet even after laying out $391 million in cash for the company, Zynga will still be left with a stockpile of roughly $1.2 billion in cash built up during its meteoric Farmville and Cityville-fueled run of fundraising.
"We believe that bringing Zynga and NaturalMotion together is the right step at the right time," Zynga CEO Don Mattrick said in a statement. "Our acquisition of NaturalMotion will allow us to significantly expand our creative pipeline, accelerate our mobile growth, and bring next-generation technology and tools to Zynga that we believe will fast track our ability to deliver more hit games."
Zynga will be making room for NaturalMotion and its 260 employees by implementing what it is calling a "global workforce reduction" that will eliminate 314 employees, or roughly 15 percent of the company's workforce. That move will generate "approximately $33 to $35 million in pre-tax savings for 2014" and leave Zynga with nearly 1,800 employees before the NaturalMotion buyout is taken into account. That's down from an employee count of over 3,000 during the company's heady peak.
For the 2013 calendar year, Zynga's revenues were down nearly 32 percent from the year before, to about $873 million. Despite this, the company lost only about $37 million for the year, a significant reduction from 2012's $209 million loss and better than both internal and market-based estimates.
The company continues to see its once-massive player base eroding, though, with monthly active users down 16 percent quarter-to-quarter in the fourth quarter of 2013. At the same time, those players are paying 10 percent more on average than they had the previous quarter, somewhat cancelling out the raw player losses.
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