Candy Crush Saga's developer goes public, loses almost $1 billion

King, the developer behind the wildly-popular Candy Crush Saga, went public yesterday, but the price of its shares quickly fell below the $20 mark. The game company hoped to establish a market value of around $7.6 billion via an IPO (initial public offering) and it hoped to sell roughly 22 million shares priced at $22.50. However, the price of King's stocks quickly fell down 16% to $18.90, bringing the game developer's value to roughly $6 billion. The London-based company succeeded in selling just 15.5 million shares during the first day of its IPO, placing it among the worst-performing ones since Twitter went public back in November 2013.


The developer of Candy Crush Saga is the largest game company to go public since Zynga. As a side comparison, the price of Zynga's shares decreased by just 5% on the first day of its initial public offering and the company is currently valued at about $4 billion.


The most sound reason for King's poor performance is the reluctance of investors to put their money in a company, which solely relies on the success of just one high-grossing game – the in-app purchases in Candy Crush Saga generated roughly $600 million for the company in Q4 2013 alone.

source: Reuters