In a note to Zynga staff, Pincus said he’d made the decision after realizing that “a ship is better with one captain putting a hand on the wheel.” Looking back at his time at Zynga’s helm, Pincus gave himself “high marks being an entrepreneur and entrepreneuring a big idea about how popular social gaming could be. But I learned a lot of hard lessons on the CEO front … and do not give myself very high marks as a CEO of a large-scale company.”
Pincus oversaw the company from its startup days to taking it public in December 2011, then watched as Zynga shares lost 80% of their value within six months. From a $4.58 start on Wednesday, Zynga shares fell 16¢ and lost a further 7¢ on Thursday to close at $4.35, still less than half its $10 IPO price.
ZYNGA’S Q1 ALL A QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE
Zynga released its Q1 report card on Wednesday, showing revenue of $168m, down 36% year-on-year. Online game revenue fell 42% to $132m while advertising and other revenue rose 5% to $36m. Zynga recorded a $61m loss for the quarter, which included $30m in restructuring charges. Zynga is projecting a loss of around $70m in Q2.
Bookings, representing users’ real-money in-game purchases, came to $161m, down nearly 30% year-on-year. However, it was up 10% sequentially, suggesting Mattrick’s efforts to pump out the water from the USS Zynga’s lower decks may be having some effect. Most of Zynga’s Q1 numbers follow a similar pattern: down precipitously year-on-year, up slightly on a sequential basis.
Average bookings per daily average user rose 28% to $0.063, which would be fantastic were it not for daily active users (DAU) falling 46% to 28m. Monthly active users (MAU) fell 51% to 123m, monthly unique users (MUU) fell 43% to 86m and monthly unique payers (MUP) fell 44% to 1.4m. Looking at those numbers sequentially, DAUs rose 7%, MAUs rose 10%, MUU’s rose 8% and MUPs were up 5%.
Zynga Poker accounted for 24% of overall game revenue, up from 21% in Q4. Zynga Poker bookings rose on a sequential basis, the first such increase in seven quarters. Mobile users grew 19%, the game’s strongest mobile growth in two years and much better than Zynga’s overall mobile gains, which saw mobile MAUs up 11% and DAUs up 10%.