Kara Swisher

Recent Posts by Kara Swisher

Zynga’s Lackluster Q2 Earnings Still Beat Wall Street Expectations, but User Stats Plummet

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Zynga said it lost one cent a share today, on an adjusted basis, which bested Wall Street expectations of a loss of up to four cents. Last year in the same period, Zynga earned one cent.

That passes as good news for the troubled San Francisco online social gaming company, which is in the midst of a turnaround.

Adjusted revenues — or, in Zynga’s case, bookings — were essentially in line with expectations, at $188 million versus expectations of about $185 million. Total revenue was $231 million, down almost 40 percent from a year ago.

In addition, there was a significant drop in monthly active users in the quarter to 187 million from 306 million a year ago, Zynga said. Daily active users were also down to 39 million from 72 million a year ago, and monthly uniques declined to 123 million from 193 million.

Not good, obviously.

“The next few years will be a time of phenomenal growth in our space and Zynga has incredible assets to take advantage of the market opportunity,” said former Microsoft Xbox head Don Mattrick, who was appointed new CEO of Zynga two weeks ago. “To do that, we need to get back to basics and take a longer term view on our products and business, develop more efficient processes and tighten up execution all across the company. We have a lot of hard work in front of us and as we reset, we expect to see more volatility in our business than we would like over the next two to four quarters.”

Zynga also said today that it would abandon real-money gaming efforts in the U.S., which rattled investors hoping for a lucrative payoff down the road in the fast-growing arena.

There will be a conference call with investors at 2 pm PT today, where execs will explain it all for you. Or not so much.

Here’s the actual press release, if you want to study up:

ZNGA_News_2013_7_25_General_Releases

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