Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/09/30/king_ipo_report/
First Twitter, now Candy Crush King. So who ISN'T 'filing a secret IPO'?
Brit games biz plots Wall St affaire de coeur, says source
Posted in On-Prem, 30th September 2013 13:59 GMT
King.com, the Brit mobile gaming firm behind the smash-hit amusement Candy Crush Saga, has reportedly filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in the US.
A well-placed source told Reuters that the company responsible for the sweetie swap-and-match distraction has submitted to watchdogs its confidential paperwork to go public on an American market, confirming an earlier report in the Daily Telegraph.
King told The Reg that it wouldn't comment on the speculation.
The firm is using the same process that Twitter is following for its own IPO: this involves a secret registration procedure brought in by America's Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act in April 2012, which tries to help small businesses raise capital and hopefully increase job growth.
King has about 150 games in its stable, which can be played on phones, Facebook and through its website, though its most famous invention is puzzler Candy Crush Saga.
While a number of tech firms are expected to go public in the next few months to ride the excitement of Twitter's hotly anticipated market debut, King is just as likely to be compared to rival Zynga. That company raised a billion dollars in a debut two years ago during the height of the popularity of its flagship game Farmville. Since then, the biz has floundered, enduring waves of layoffs, attempting and then abandoning a bid to get into online gambling and posting quarter after quarter of poor results. ®