By reporting their earnings today, Zynga and King Digital Entertainment invited a comparison for how they are both doing in the social-mobile game business. And clearly, based on the third quarter results, King looks better as the leader of the casual game market.
Riccardo Zacconi, King.com’s CEO.
Investors place a higher value on King than Zynga. At the close of the market today, King’s stock price was $13.19 a share, well be low its $22 a share IPO price earlier this year. That values King at $4.22 billion. Zynga’s stock price is $2.36 a share, compared to its $10 a share IPO price in 2011. Zynga is valued at $2.11 billion. And while Zynga isn’t buying back its stock now, King said today it would spend $150 million buying back its shares.
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Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
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