作者：Steve Peterson

在Zynga的财报电话会议之后，其股价收盘上涨了12.26%（基于每股2.39美元）。这表明投资者积极回应了这一数值以及财报电话会议上所出现的各种评价。以下让我们详细阐述这一数值变化的过程。

因为过去两个季度黯淡的财务业绩，Zynga十分谨慎地面对着这次的财报电话会议。如今该公司的股票是根据其所持有的现金，现金等价物以及市场证券进行定价。换句话说，投资者认为该公司的知识产权，运营项目，员工创造收益的能力，3.11亿月活跃用户或者2.34亿美元的总部大楼的估值并不高。

会议一开始，首席执行官马克·平克斯便明确了此次电话会议的基调，他有所保留地说道：“对于我们来说过去几个月的确出现了巨大的挑战。虽然单单在Facebook平台上我们便从游戏下载中获得了超过20亿美元的收益，但这却还未达到我们的发展预期。”对此结果平克斯列出了2大原因：“首先便是游戏执行的问题。其次，我们高估了玩家对于手机，智能手机和平板电脑的适应能力。”平克斯同样也承认，Zynga在游戏销售的衰减也远远快于他们的预期，并且该公司也不能快速创造出新游戏去弥补这种衰弱。

FarmVille 2(from g4tv)

正如我们所预想的，平克斯随后便开始阐述Zynga能够恢复发展的原因。他列举了《FramVille 2》与《ChefVille》在Facebook上分别取得了第一位和第三位的好成绩。如今《FarmVille 2》已经拥有了6100万的月活跃用户。平克斯还指出，现在在Zynga.com上已经有18款游戏了，并且大多数游戏都是来自于其它发行合作伙伴，而该公司在最近收购了A Bit Lucky后所致力于的第一款中核游戏也将在明年与玩家见面。

首席财务官Dave Wehner也强调，他们将从昨天开始执行成本控制计划，即最终将裁掉150名Zynga员工（即5%的劳动力），终止13款表现不佳的游戏运行，并减少市场营销与设备开支。Wehner说道：“我们并不满足于最近的业绩。所以我们将立即采取成本控制计划。”Wehner还表示，在落实成本控制计划后，他们有可能在明年节省下6000万至8000万美元。

成本增加的部分原因便是源于该公司的运营表现问题。在第三季度，Zynga挪出了3千万股作为员工的优先认股权，希望以此弥补早期的股票赠予付诸东流的情况（即如果股价未出现上涨，这些股票便毫无价值可言）。Zynga在吸引并挽留员工方面承受着巨大的压力，其股价已经低于最高点时的20%了。

Wehner详细阐述了Zynga所面临的一些问题。他解释道：“手机DAU的持续下滑，即从第二季度的3300万跌至第三季度的2200万主要是因为《Draw Something》的衰退。”他们全年的平均每用户收益之所以会下降19%便是从早前高盈利游戏转向盈利不佳的新游戏（根据Zynga的陈述，也就是街机类游戏）所造成的。

根据平克斯，如今摆在Zynga面前的最大机遇便是手机游戏，真钱博彩游戏，广告以及新游戏的最佳发行时间安排。

平克斯表示，手机游戏为Zynga带来了巨大的利益。根据时间推算，如今Zynga的应用网络在美国市场已经位居第四。在美国前五名游戏榜单中便有三款游戏是来自Zynga，并且在所有智能手机用户中更是有35%的用户至少会玩一款Zynga的游戏。更重要的是，手机游戏已经占据着Zynga总收益的20%。而仅在一年前，Facebook游戏仍占据着Zynga总收益的93%。

现实博彩游戏（以下简称RMG），或者是Zynga口中的“真钱游戏”也是他们现阶段所瞄准的前进方向（游戏邦注：但却不是面向美国市场）。即他们已经宣布将与独家合作伙伴面向英国市场发售支持现金的在线扑克游戏和赌场类游戏。Zynga计划与合作伙伴bwin.party基于RMG业务模式在2013年上半年推出一系列产品，包括扑克游戏，以及一整套（180款）赌场游戏——像老虎机，轮盘赌以及二十一点等桌面游戏。他们并未披露相关交易条款，所以我们并不清楚这次交易将会对Zynga的收益带来何种影响。当然了，如果他们希望将这类型游戏推向美国市场，首先就需要得到现有的联邦法律规定的支持，所以我们并不清楚这一目标何时才能真正实现。

Zynga也非常重视广告这一机遇。平克斯说道：“我们是通过网页和手机去出售新型广告单位而发展广告业务。在过去一季度，我们增加了12名新的销售成员，并在技术上进行了一定的投资，希望借此去优化广告服务并帮助我们实现这一目标。”他们的确取得了非常显著的成功。平克斯继续说道：“视频广告已经成为了发展最迅速的一块。从第二季度向第三季度转变中它便已经提高了142个百分点了！”

对于Zynga来说最重要的一大领域还是产品的完善——不管是质量还是数量。Wehner说道：“在2013年，我们计划每季度推出2款网页游戏和4款手机游戏。”平克斯通过列举了《FarmVille 2》中出色的网页3D图像而证实了“我们始终致力于创造更优秀的游戏”这一决心。平克斯也暗示，《CityVille 2》将遵循着这一更新方向。至少，现在的Zynga已经向玩家证实了一些成功游戏的续集也能凭借着自己的实力取得成功这一事实（不像《黑帮战争2》）。

平克斯同样也提到，该公司正在积极探索其它游戏领域，包括即时策略游戏和角色扮演游戏，并试图将这类型游戏推向更广泛的用户。同时，Zynga也将涉及中核游戏，甚至是更多硬核游戏。Zynga Partners项目更是帮助Zynga可以无需投入自己的资源而尝试更多不同游戏类型的开发。

尽管分析家进行了各种深入分析，但却都未能明确平克斯和Wehner对于Zynga在2013年的设想。

对Zynga在过去的执行和发展感充满质疑的Arvind Bhatia（来自Sterne Agee）便提出了一个尖锐的问题：“根据你们的说法，Zynga在第四季度的销售额将达到2亿美元。如果在2013能够持续发展，这一销售额将增至8亿美元到9亿美元。截止第三季度，你们的员工总人数为3300人。而在2011年，Zynga的销售额仅为1亿美元，且员工人数也只有1900人。当你们表示这种衰弱是进行更大发展的必经阶段时，是否也意味着在接下来一个季度中，你们的收益轨道将发生巨大的变化？”

这是一个很好的问题，但是Wehner仅提及他们将“继续通过投资去推动发展”，极力避免谈及他们在2013年的收益可能性这一话题。

Zynga所面临的基本事实在于，它在早期利用了Facebook的发展势头，并以此发展成为一家巨头公司。而当Facebook的发展开始趋缓时，他们却不能顺利过度到手机或其它领域，以此去弥补收益损失。同时，随着早前游戏的衰败，Zynga正不断通过添加各种更新内容去挽留住玩家的注意力。虽然我们还不清楚《FarmVille 2》是否能够成功地做到这一点，但是至少截至目前，这款游戏已经取得了不错的成绩。

Zynga必须在许多方面进行彻底改造：创造更多手机游戏，定期推出游戏，尝试一些现金游戏，探索不同的游戏类型，提高广告收入并更新早前的游戏。从更大层面来看，Zynga还可以通过提升股票价格而重振员工士气，并提高员工留存率。

这是一个艰巨的任务，需要Zynga为此投入巨大的努力。尽管该公司的某些参数呈现出下降趋势（如每用户平均收益下降19%便是一大问题），但是我们仍需要牢记，Zynga在银行中还拥有16亿美元的现金，并且该公司每天也仍在赚取着巨大收益。根据预测，该公司在第四季度的经营将呈现出收支相抵的情况。尽管这并不是最好的结果，但是至少证明了该公司不会很快被市场所淘汰。

平克斯牢牢把握着该公司的控股权，也就是未经过他的允许该公司便不可能被轻易出售，他也不可能轻易下台。而Zynga最终会面临何种结果便是完全取决于他将如何引导公司度过这一难关，并且他也决心与Zynga一起面对这种困难局面。在接下来的两个季度中，我们便能清楚地看到，Zynga到底是能稳步走上光明的发展道路还是就此迈入万劫不复的深渊。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Zynga’s road forward: Better games, more often

By Steve Peterson

Update: Zynga’s stock price closed up 12.26 percent, at $2.39 per share, the day following their earnings call. Investors have responded positively to both the numbers and the comments made during the earnings call, apparently. See the story on the numbers here.

Original story:

Zynga was chastened and cautious in its earnings call, which seemed appropriate given the lackluster financial results the company has turned in for the last two quarters. The company’s shares are priced at about the amount of cash, cash equivalents and market securities the company has on hand. In other words, investors are not giving any value to the company’s intellectual property, its ongoing operations, the ability of the staff to generate revenue, the 311 million monthly active users, or the $234 million headquarters building that Zynga owns.

CEO Mark Pincus set the tone for the conference call at the beginning: “The last several months have obviously been challenging for us,” he said with classic understatement. “Total game bookings are projected to exceed $2 billion this year on Facebook alone. Despite this, we failed to meet our own growth expectations.” Pincus gave two main reasons for the failure: “First, our game execution… Second, faster than expected player adoption of mobile, smartphones and tablets.” Pincus also admitted that Zynga had faster declines in bookings than expected, and that the company wasn’t able to bring new games to market fast enough to offset these declines.

As you would expect, Pincus pivoted to why things will get better for Zynga. He pointed out the successful introductions of FarmVille 2 and ChefVille, which are now the #1 and #3 games on Facebook, respectively. FarmVille 2 has 61 million monthly active users. Pincus also noted that there are now 18 games on Zynga.com, most of them from publishing partners, and that the company’s first mid-core game from recently acquired A Bit Lucky should arrive next year.

CFO Dave Wehner highlighted the cost-reduction plan that began implementation yesterday, which will result in the layoffs of approximately 150 Zynga employees (some 5 percent of the work force), ‘sunsetting’ 13 underperforming games, and reducing spending in marketing and equipment. “We are not satisfied with our recent performance,” Wehner stated. “And we’re taking immediate action with a cost-reduction plan.” Wehner noted that this should result in between $60 and $80 million in savings over the next year.

Some cost increases were due to the company’s performance problems. Zynga granted 30 million stock options to employees in the third quarter, which probably represents the shares given out to make up for the fact that earlier stock grants are all under water and thus valueless unless the stock rises significantly. Zynga’s ability to attract and retain employees is under severe pressure since the stock has dropped to less than 20 percent of its high point.

Wehner detailed some of the problems that Zynga has had. “The sequential decline in mobile DAUs from 33 million in Q2 to 22 million in Q3 was largely due to declines in Draw Something,” Wehner explained. Average bookings per user were down 19 percent year over year, which he attributed to a shift from older, higher-monetizing games to newer games that don’t monetize as well (which, from earlier Zynga statements, means the arcade-type games).

The big opportunities ahead of Zynga, according to Pincus, are mobile games, real-world gambling, and advertising, along with a steady release schedule of new games.

Mobile games are doing well for Zynga, according to Pincus. Zynga’s network of apps now ranks #4 in the USA, by time spent. Zynga has three of the top five games in the USA, and 35 percent of all smartphone users play at least one Zynga game. Perhaps more to the point, mobile games now account for 20 percent of all of Zynga’s bookings. That does represent progress from the period a year ago, when Facebook accounted for 93 percent of Zynga’s revenue.

Real-world gambling, or what Zynga terms ‘real-money gaming,’ is something Zynga has been making progress on, though not in the United States. Zynga announced an exclusive partnership to offer real money online Poker and Casino games in the UK market. Zynga’s UK-based RMG service and bwin.party will launch RMG products including Poker and a full suite of 180 Casino games in the first half of 2013, which include table games such as slots, roulette and blackjack. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, so it’s not clear how much of an impact on revenue this deal could cause. Of course, implementing this in the United States will require changes to federal and/or state laws, meaning that there’s no way of knowing when it could occur.

Advertising for Zynga is an opportunity the company seems to be taking seriously. “We’re growing our ad business by serving and selling new kinds of ad units across web and mobile,” said Pincus. “In the past quarter, we added 12 new sales team members and invested in technology that improves our optimization and our targeting.” The results have been positive, Pincus said. “Video advertising has emerged as our fastest-growing segment. It increased 142 percent just from the second to the third quarter.”

Probably the most important area for Zynga is improving the products, both in quality and in quantity. “The game launch cadence in 2013 is, on average 2 web games per quarter and 4 mobile games per quarter,” said Wehner. “We’re focused on building great games,” said Pincus, offering as evidence the success of FarmVille 2 with 3D graphics in the browser, which is doing very well. CityVille 2 will apparently follow the same upgrade path, Pincus indicated. At least, Zynga has now shown that a sequel to a successful game can in itself be successful, unlike Mafia Wars 2.

Pincus also mentioned that the company is exploring other genres like RTS and RPGs, and looking for ways to bring those games to a wider audience. At the same time, Zynga will be exploring midcore and perhaps even core games. The Zynga Partners program also lets Zynga try out different game types without having to invest its own resources in development.

Analysts drilled in to try and get more details, but were largely unsuccessful in getting a picture of what Pincus and Wehner think 2013 will look like. It’s the usual verbal juggling in an earnings call, with wary execs feeding talking points to skeptical analysts. The questioning did get sharper at some points, though.

Arvind Bhatia of Sterne Agee, who’s been critical of Zynga’s performance and prospects in the past, asked a very pointed question: “Your bookings run rate for the 4th quarter is implied to be something north of $200 million, based on your guidance. If we grow that out through 2013, you’ll be at an $800 to $900 million run rate, and your headcount as of the end of third quarter was 3300. Back in 2011 you were at a billion dollar run rate and 1900 headcount. When you comment that your reductions are aligned with the growth you’re looking forward to, are we talking about a massive amount of change in the revenue trajectory in the coming quarters?”

A good question, and one which CFO Wehner adroitly danced around, talking about “continuing to invest to drive growth” while being unwilling to talk about revenue possibilities for 2013. We saw you palm that card, Dave.

The basic facts of Zynga are that it hitched itself to Facebook’s rapid growth early and used that momentum to build a large company. Once Facebook’s growth flattened out, Zynga was not able to transition smoothly into mobile or other areas to make up for that lost revenue. Meanwhile, older games are finally starting to taper off, and Zynga is scrambling to upgrade them to recapture the audience. It wasn’t really clear that FarmVille 2 would succeed at doing that, but the numbers so far for that game are very encouraging.

Zynga has to reinvent itself in many ways: producing more mobile games, getting games out on a regular schedule, trying out real-money gaming, exploring different genres, boosting ad revenue and refreshing old games. On the larger scale, Zynga needs to worry about employee morale and retention, though boosting the stock price will help with that.

It’s a huge task, and it’s going to mean some hard slogging. While some of the company’s metrics are down (the drop of 19 percent in average bookings per user is troubling), it’s important to remember that Zynga still has $1.6 billion in cash in the bank, and that it’s making money on a daily basis. The projections for 4th quarter show the company breaking even. While that’s not great, that’s also not a company that’s going to go out of business any time soon.

Pincus has control of the stock in such a way that the company cannot be sold without his approval, nor can he be fired. It’s entirely up to him to guide the company through this rough patch, and he seems doggedly determined to see Zynga through the tough times. The next two quarters should show if Zynga is moving in the right direction, or if they’ve been barking up the wrong tree.(source:gamesindustry)