以《糖果传奇》为例：说说手游公司为什么不应该上市

    看起来，华尔街可能终于吃到了“坏糖果”——这次是一些表现糟糕的科技股。

    风靡一时的手游《糖果传奇》（Candy Crush Saga）开发商King Digital Entertainment周二宣布最近一个季度增长乏力、业绩平平，导致其尾盘股价下跌超过20%。这家手游界标杆公司的新游戏显然未能创造充足的现金，无法弥补进入市场饱和期的《糖果传奇》游戏收入的“出乎意料地”大幅下降。由于用户喜新厌旧、技术迅速迭代以及准入门槛低到近乎不存在，King以及手游行业的其他公司已被证明是糟糕的股权投资。或许，现在是时候让它们回到创业之初的硅谷车库里去了，直到它们足够成熟后再重返华尔街。

    过去几年的IPO热潮已将很多有问题的公司引入公开市场。虽然还没有一家公司的估值达到上世纪90年代末互联网泡沫时期荒谬的估值，但有一些已经相当接近了。在所有这些公开上市的公司中，King Digital Entertainment显然是最草草上场的一家。该公司搭上了最近一轮“web 2.0”上市浪潮的便车，获得了高估值。

    作为手游产品开发商，King几乎处于科技产业链的底端。该公司曾拥有爆炸式的增长，2013年收入较前一年增长了11倍，创造了近5.67亿美元的利润。但约80%的收入来自这家公司旗下的一个单一类别游戏——《糖果传奇》。King试图说服投资者相信，该公司将重现《糖果传奇》的成功，但没什么人买账。其股票价格首日上市即下跌16%。

    尽管困难重重，King作为上市公司发布的首个季度业绩仍有些鼓舞人心的亮点。该公司在收入多样化上取得了进展，《糖果传奇》占其收入的比例降至68%。或许市场看错了King？它的股价大幅反弹。投资银行纷纷设定了高高在上的目标价，并给予“买进”评级。

    King Digital周二公布实现盈利，并向股东派发1.50亿美元的巨额特殊股息，但股价未能达到华尔街激进的目标价格。该公司其他的游戏表现欠佳，来自《糖果传奇》的收入也持续下降。德意志银行（Deutsche Bank）将目标价从27美元降至12美元（该股周三盘后交易价格在14.50美元附近。）

    那么，这是因为华尔街期望太高太早？还是King Digital根本没有与科技巨头竞争的实力呢？看起来，两者皆有。

    手游业尚处于婴儿期，它能否为投资者创造持续收益仍有很多疑问。这一领域可能有巨大的增长潜力，比如亚洲的智能手机使用数量正在快速增长，但是那些曾经开发出热门游戏的公司或许无法从这些未来的增长中获得回报。市值一度达到70多亿美元的竞争对手Zynga也在试图重现其《开心农场》（Farmville）系列游戏的成功，结果并不顺利，为此该公司股价已连续多月下跌，今年已跌去30%，较2011年12月的IPO价格下跌超过70%。

    It looks like Wall Street may have finally had its fill of bad candy—and bad tech stocks.

    King Digital Entertainment , maker of the (once) popular mobile gaming app “Candy Crush Saga,” saw its shares fall over 20% late Tuesday after the company reported sluggish growth and tepid earnings for the previous quarter. The mobile gaming kingpin’s new titles apparently failed to generate sufficient cash to cover the “unexpectedly” steep drop in revenue from its maturing Candy Crush franchise. With a fickle audience, rapidly changing technology, and almost no barriers to entry, King as well as the rest of the mobile gaming space have proven to be terrible equity investments. It may be time for them to head back to their garages in Silicon Valley and stay there until they are mature enough to come back to Wall Street.

    The recent IPO boom has brought a lot of questionable companies to the public markets in the last couple of years. While none have boasted the absurd bubble-like valuations that characterized the Internet IPO boom of the late 1990s, a few have come pretty close. Of all the companies that went public, King Digital Entertainment, was clearly among the sketchiest. It was riding the wave of other “web 2.0″ properties that had recently gone to the market and garnered strong valuations.

    King, as a maker of “mobile gaming” products, was pretty much the bottom of the tech barrel. It had explosive growth, with 2013 revenues up 11-fold over the previous year, yielding profits of around $567 million. But around 80% of that revenue came from only one of its various games—Candy Crush. King tried to sell investors on the notion that it could repeat and build on Candy Crush’s success, but few took the bait. Its stock fell 16% on its first day of trading.

    Despite the odds, King posted some encouraging profits in its first quarterly earnings as a public company. It had been able to diversify its revenue so that Candy Crush only accounted for 68% of its revenue, instead of 80%. Maybe the market misjudged King after all? Its stock price rallied. The investment banks set lofty price targets and slapped a “buy” rating on the stock.

    King Digital posted a profit on Tuesday and issued a sizable $150 million special dividend to its shareholders, but it failed to meet Wall Street’s aggressive price targets. Its other games still aren’t doing well, while revenues from Candy Crush have continued to fall. Deutsche Bank lowered its earnings target from $27 a share to $12 a share (the stock was trading around $14.50 in the after hours markets).

    So, is this a case of Wall Street simply expecting too much, too soon, or does King Digital simply not have what it takes to compete with the big boys of the tech world? It seems to be a little bit of both.

    Mobile gaming is in its infancy and there are a lot of questions about its ability to generate consistent profits for its investors. The sector may have great potential to grow, amid the proliferation of smartphones in Asia for example, but companies that have managed to produce hit games in the past may not reap the rewards of such future growth. Rival game maker Zynga , which at one point commanded a market valuation of over $7 billion, has had a hard time repeating the success of its Farmville franchise and has seen its share price tumble month after month as a result—down 30% this year and down over 70% since its IPO in December 2011.