Candy Crush Saga creator King may be worth $7.6B after IPO

Social-game publisher King, creator of the highly addictive Candy Crush Saga, just priced its IPO at between $21 and $24 a share — up to a $7.6 billion valuation. King claims this will leave it with approximately $326 million in capital, after transaction costs, for corporate purposes and acquisitions, reports French news agency AFP. While this valuation is new, the IPO filing is not; London-based King announced its plans to go public nearly a month ago, and at the time the firm planned to raise up to $500 million.

King is one of the top publishers in the $16 billion mobile-gaming market. That sector is growing due in lare part to games like Candy Crush Saga. King’s revenues have grown tremendously thanks to puzzler, which has players trying to match three identical candies to score points. King earned $568 million in profit on revenues of $1.88 billion in 2013, and Candy Crush Saga — the top grossing iOS game of 2013 — is the driving force behind that. It w