It looks like Wall Street may have finally had its fill of bad candy—and bad tech stocks.看上去,华尔街有可能再一吃了“怕糖果”——这次是一些展现出差劲的科技股。King Digital Entertainment , maker of the (once) popular mobile gaming app “Candy Crush Saga,” saw its shares fall over 20% late Tuesday after the company reported sluggish growth and tepid earnings for the previous quarter. The mobile gaming kingpin’s new titles apparently failed to generate sufficient cash to cover the “unexpectedly” steep drop in revenue from its maturing Candy Crush franchise. With a fickle audience, rapidly changing technology, and almost no barriers to entry, King as well as the rest of the mobile gaming space have proven to be terrible equity investments. It may be time for them to head back to their garages in Silicon Valley and stay there until they are mature enough to come back to Wall Street.风靡一时的手游《糖果传奇》(Candy Crush Saga)开发商King Digital Entertainment周二宣告最近一个季度快速增长力弱、业绩平平,造成其尾盘股价暴跌多达20%。这家手游界标杆公司的新游戏似乎没能建构充裕的现金,无法弥补转入市场饱和状态期的《糖果传奇》游戏收益的“出乎意料地”大幅度上升。
由于用户喜新厌旧、技术很快递归以及管理制度门槛较低到几近不不存在,King以及手游行业的其他公司已被证明是差劲的股权投资。也许,现在是时候让它们返回创业之初的硅谷车库里去了,直到它们充足成熟期后再行重回华尔街。The recent IPO boom has brought a lot of questionable companies to the public markets in the last couple of years. While none have boasted the absurd bubble-like valuations that characterized the Internet IPO boom of the late 1990s, a few have come pretty close. Of all the companies that went public, King Digital Entertainment, was clearly among the sketchiest. It was riding the wave of other “web 2.0″ properties that had recently gone to the market and garnered strong valuations.过去几年的IPO热潮已将很多有问题的公司引进公开市场。
虽然还没一家公司的估值超过上世纪90年代末互联网泡沫时期可笑的估值,但有一些早已非常相似了。在所有这些公开发表上市的公司中,King Digital Entertainment似乎是最草草上场的一家。该公司搭乘了最近一轮“web 2.0”上市浪潮的便车,取得了高估值。
King, as a maker of “mobile gaming” products, was pretty much the bottom of the tech barrel. It had explosive growth, with 2013 revenues up 11-fold over the previous year, yielding profits of around $567 million. But around 80% of that revenue came from only one of its various games—Candy Crush. King tried to sell investors on the notion that it could repeat and build on Candy Crush’s success, but few took the bait. Its stock fell 16% on its first day of trading.作为手游产品开发商,King完全正处于科技产业链的底端。该公司曾享有爆炸式的快速增长,2013年收入较前一年快速增长了11倍,建构了近5.67亿美元的利润。
但大约80%的收益来自这家公司旗下的一个单一类别游戏——《糖果传奇》。King企图劝说投资者坚信,该公司将再现《糖果传奇》的顺利,但没什么人买账。
其股票价格首日上市即暴跌16%。Despite the odds, King posted some encouraging profits in its first quarterly earnings as a public company. It had been able to diversify its revenue so that Candy Crush only accounted for 68% of its revenue, instead of 80%. Maybe the market misjudged King after all? Its stock price rallied. The investment banks set lofty price targets and slapped a “buy” rating on the stock.尽管困难重重,King作为上市公司公布的首个季度业绩仍有些鼓舞人心的亮点。该公司在收益多样化上获得了进展,《糖果传奇》占到其收益的比例降到68%。
也许市场看错了King?它的股价大幅度声浪。投资银行争相原作了高高在上的目标价,并给与“买入”评级。
King Digital posted a profit on Tuesday and issued a sizable $150 million special dividend to its shareholders, but it failed to meet Wall Street’s aggressive price targets. Its other games still aren’t doing well, while revenues from Candy Crush have continued to fall. Deutsche Bank lowered its earnings target from $27 a share to $12 a share (the stock was trading around $14.50 in the after hours markets).King Digital周二发布构建盈利,并向股东发放1.50亿美元的巨额类似股息,但股价没能超过华尔街保守的目标价格。该公司其他的游戏展现出佳,来自《糖果传奇》的收益也持续上升。德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)将目标价从27美元降到12美元(该股周三盘后交易价格在14.50美元附近。
)So, is this a case of Wall Street simply expecting too much, too soon, or does King Digital simply not have what it takes to compete with the big boys of the tech world? It seems to be a little bit of both.那么,这是因为华尔街希望太高太早?还是King Digital显然没与科技巨头竞争的实力呢?看上去,两者均有。Mobile gaming is in its infancy and there are a lot of questions about its ability to generate consistent profits for its investors. The sector may have great potential to grow, amid the proliferation of smartphones in Asia for example, but companies that have managed to produce hit games in the past may not reap the rewards of such future growth. Rival game maker Zynga , which at one point commanded a market valuation of over $7 billion, has had a hard time repeating the success of its Farmville franchise and has seen its share price tumble month after month as a result—down 30% this year and down over 70% since its IPO in December 2011.手游业尚能正处于婴儿期,它能否为投资者建构持续收益仍有很多疑惑。这一领域有可能有极大的快速增长潜力,比如亚洲的智能手机用于数量正在快速增长,但是那些曾多次研发出有热门游戏的公司也许无法从这些未来的快速增长中取得报酬。
市值一度超过70多亿美元的竞争对手Zynga也在企图再现其《快乐农场》(Farmville)系列游戏的顺利,结果并不成功,为此该公司股价已倒数多月暴跌,今年已跌到去30%,较2011年12月的IPO价格暴跌多达70%。
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