Candy Crush Saga has been a smash hit, attracting tens of millions of players and generating spectacular profits for its developer, King Digital Entertainment.
But on Wednesday, when King had its debut on the New York Stock Exchange, investors feared that the company was at risk of becoming a one-hit wonder.
The stock slumped as trade opened Wednesday, and ended the day down 15.6 percent, closing at $19 a share. The sheer drop disappointed the investors who scooped up the stock at the initial public offering Tuesday, as well as those who bought shares Wednesday morning.
It was the worst first-day performance of an I.P.O. so far this year, according to data from Standard & Poor’s Capital IQ. (A majority of the companies that stumbled out of the gate have recovered since their trading debuts.)
With the popularity of Candy Crush already on the wane, King has pointed out that its other games are gaining users. But the big question now is whether a company that derives 78 percent of its total gross bookings from a single game can blossom into a more diversified studio.
Other popular games, including Angry Birds, have lost some of their luster. And shares of Zynga, a company once heralded as the next big thing in games, have fallen 54 percent since the company’s I.P.O. in 2011, as it struggles to replicate past successes.
“We’re not focused on the short term,” the chief executive and co-founder of King, Riccardo Zacconi, said in an interview on Wednesday. “If you want to achieve shareholder value, you have to look at the long term. I’m looking forward to getting back to work in the studio tomorrow.”
The company generated considerable hype going into its I.P.O., with earnings that rose a staggering 7,000 percent last year, to nearly $568 million. On Wednesday morning, a banner with its logo was draped on the facade of the New York Stock Exchange building in Lower Manhattan.
Characters from the company’s games, including a giant plush strawberry from the Farm Heroes Saga game and candy pieces from Candy Crush, roamed the stock exchange floor, posing for the cameras.
To some extent, King may have suffered unfortunate timing. While the I.P.O. market has been unusually robust this year, with companies raising $31.2 billion in proceeds to date, this week has been a stormy one for young technology companies.
Twitter, last year’s I.P.O. darling, is down 13 percent this
week through Wednesday. FireEye, a cybersecurity services provider that had a splashy debut in September, is down 11 percent. Even Netflix, a more mature technology player, is down 8 percent.
But King also faces a unique set of challenges. Many young technology companies report rapid growth, if little or no profit, when they first disclose their financials to the public. Investors have learned to love these types of companies, helping upstarts like Twitter pop on their trading debuts.
King’s situation is quite different. The company is rolling in profits, but its megahit game is slowing down. Candy Crush’s gross bookings, a nonstandard measure of what players pay for items in the game, fell in the fourth quarter of last year.
Seen through that lens, the company’s financial statements may induce a feeling of vertigo.
“Getting vertical takeoff is one thing,” said Rett Wallace, the chief executive of Triton Research, a firm that analyzes private companies. “But antigravity is harder.”
The company’s defenders argue that comparisons to other technology firms are not that useful. One person involved in the I.P.O. process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for publication, drew a comparison to Amgen, the giant drug company, which more than a decade ago bought Immunex to get its hands on a blockbuster drug.
Similarly, King’s future growth depends on its ability to get hot games in its product pipeline. The company said in its I.P.O. prospectus that it might use some of the proceeds from the offering to make acquisitions.
King raised $500 million in the I.P.O. on Tuesday evening, achieving a valuation of more than $7 billion.
Even as investors fret over the longevity of its hit game, King has shown that its particular business model is good at getting many players hooked while generating large amounts of money from the most devoted few. The company offers so-called freemium games, which are free to play, but charge players money for virtual goodies or upgrades.
Last year, revenue generated by freemium games and other such apps more than tripled over 2012, according to a report released on Wednesday by IDC and App Annie. Over the same period, apps that cost money to download experienced a 23 percent decline in revenue.
For King, the coming months will provide a crucial test of its ability to build on the success of Candy Crush, said Arvind Bhatia, an analyst at Sterne Agee.
But not all investors might be so patient. Another analyst, Roger L. Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, a technology research firm, drew broader implications from the I.P.O., pointing also to recent tech acquisitions done at lofty valuations.
“I feel like it’s a sign,” Mr. Kay said. “The I.P.O. market and the M.&A. market have been so effervescent that they risk just evaporating entirely.”
Mark Scott contributed reporting.