Image via Flickr/ Ian hughes

I admit it. I am a Candy Crush addict. In a 12 step program, that’s the first step. Admitting you have a problem. I don’t know why I like the game so much. It’s not as though you have to really think in order to play it. In fact, that’s probably the reason I like it. I don’t have to think. I just have to get to the next level, and the next, and the next. I also have dozens of friends who are addicted. We send each other lives, extra moves, and help each other gain entrance to successive levels. We have a love-hate relationship with Candy Crush. Like any good drug, the game lures you in gently. By the time you reach a level that is hard to beat, you’re hooked. If there was a Candy Crush rehab facility, our families would be doing interventions in order to get us there. It’s the monkey on our backs, but we aren’t alone; not by a longshot.

Candy Crush is the acknowledged leader in the casual gaming sector, with more than 600 million enthusiastic players logging into game sessions every day from just mobile devices. The game is an all-out craze on Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), with over 130 million players connecting through the social media platform monthly. With those kinds of numbers, it’s no wonder that British gaming company, King.com Ltd has decided to take itself public. Revenue from ads alone could possibly leverage the company into the stratosphere. Or not. Remember Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA)? The gaming company was also connected with Facebook and there were high expectations for its IPO. Long story short, the stock fizzled after having raised over a billion dollars in funding. So what happened? Well, the stock was either hugely overvalued, or grossly undervalued, depending on where you stood at the time. The company has yet to recover.

King.com Ltd filed their paperwork with the SEC today invoking the JOBS Act. Under the act, the company’s registration process does not have to be made public. The confidential filing tells us that the company is worth less than a billion dollars, falling in the small-cap segment of the market for now. There were rumblings on the Street that the company was considering an IPO as early as late last year. In June, King hired Credit Suisse (NYSE: CS), JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM), and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) to look into an offering. These are the investment banks that will lead the IPO. No date has been set, and nothing has been said about a possible price. These issues will be ironed out in secrecy between King, the banks, and the SEC.

In the meantime, King offers an astonishing150 games in 14 languages through mobile gadgets, Facebook, and its website. It boasts more than 1 billion game players per day, and I am unashamedly one of them. I’ll be watching this IPO with interest.

Disclosure: The author has no position in the stocks mentioned in this article, and does not intend to initiate any position in the next 72 hours.

Theresa Nelson

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