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On eve of IPO, how does King Digital compare to Zynga?

By
Dan Primack
Dan Primack
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By
Dan Primack
Dan Primack
Down Arrow Button Icon
March 25, 2014, 5:27 PM ET

FORTUNE — Expectations are that King Digital, the maker of Candy Crush, will price its IPO as early as tonight, after which it will begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol KING.

This is certainly one of the year’s trickiest offerings for investors, given that King is a hits-driven business going public while its top game may be at the height of its addictive power. Not too dissimilar to Zynga (ZNGA) going public in the midst of FarmVille-mania.

But I was curious as to how the two companies currently match up, so I ran a few numbers. For context, Zynga opened trading today with a $4.3 billion market cap, while King is looking for an initial market cap of between $6.6 billion and $7.5 billion (based on a $21-$24 per share IPO offering range):


In other words, King Digital has much better numbers across the board. The only category in which Zynga is “leading” is number of employees, which is actually a loss when put in the context of revenue-per-employee (let alone profit). I didn’t include cash on hand, in large part because today’s figures will be rendered irrelevant once King prices its IPO.

It’s also worth noting that King’s profits and revenue are significantly higher than were Zynga’s at the time of its December 2011 IPO, which valued the company at around $7 billion.

Sign up for Dan Primack’s daily email newsletter on deals and deal-makers: GetTermSheet.com

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