Zynga posts revenue growth in Q3

Shares of Zynga were about flat after rising as much as 3% in extended trading on the earnings report, and a 2.5% in regular trading.

On the year, Zynga shares are down by about 7%, but firm’s revenue was up 11% from the third quarter last year, when it reported $176.6 million in revenue. It reported a net income of $3 million, which is well up from the net loss it reported in the third quarter last year of $57.1 million.

"Our teams delivered a strong Q3 driven by the performance by Wizard of Oz Slots, Words With Friends and our newly launched Empires & Allies. We generated $176 million in total bookings and $12 million in Adjusted EBITDA, well above the top end of our guidance range. This growth was driven by our three core mobile franchises Slots, Words With Friends and Poker, which grew 61% year-over-year. These results reflect the progress we continue to make in mobile where bookings have grown 26% versus the prior year and now make up 69% of our total bookings, up from 66% in Q2. We also continue to improve monetization and in Q3, we saw average bookings per user (ABPU) grow 27% year-over-year and 10% sequentially. Today, we also announced a $200 million stock buyback program. Given our belief in the social gaming opportunity, our talent and our IP, we believe this is in our shareholders' interests. Based on the opportunity we see for Dawn of Titans and CSR2 we have made the deliberate decision to invest in future development of these games and move their launches into 2016. As we get closer to our players behavior over time, we believe there are a few key areas that we can optimize to increase long-term player retention. For Dawn of Titans specifically, given how strong the early monetization is for the game, we believe that a move of 200 basis points in day 30 retention has the potential to make the game a breakout hit. We are able to make these hard decisions, because of the cost reduction program that we put in place earlier this year," said Mark Pincus, CEO and Founder.