Zynga’s fourth quarter was strong and the company is humming along as its social games continue to lure users. However, the company said first half sequential growth would be “slower” with a pick up in the last six months of the year.
That disclosure led to a 7 percent dip in afterhours trading.
Overall, Zynga’s quarter was better than expected. The company reported a fourth quarter loss of $435 million, or $1.22 a share, on revenue of $311.2 million. Non-GAAP earnings were 5 cents a share.
Wall Street was looking for fourth quarter non-GAAP earnings of 3 cents a share on revenue of $301.1 million. Bookings for Zynga were $306.5 million in the fourth quarter.
For 2011, Zynga reported a loss of $404.3 million on revenue of $1.14 billion.
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus in a statement said that the company is seeing “great momentum in mobile and advertising and ended the year with a strong pipeline of new games.”
However, Zynga’s 2012 outlook may have been a disappointment. The company projected bookings of $1.35 billion to $1.45 billion and added “we expect that growth will be weighted towards the back-half of the year with slower sequential growth in the first half of the year.”
Non-GAAP 2012 earnings for Zynga are expected to be 24 cents a share to 28 cents a share. Wall Street was looking for 22 cents a share.
By the numbers:
- Daily active users were 54 million in the fourth quarter, up 13 percent.
- Monthly active users in the fourth quarter were 240 million, up 23 percent.
- Average daily bookings per average increased to a little more than 6 cents in the fourth quarter, up 11 percent.
