Candy Crush Saga creator King Digital Entertainment said it could be worth as much as $7.6 billion in its highly-anticipated initial public offering, French news agency AFP reported.
The London-based developer has said last month that it intended to list on the New York Stock Exchange. It has already priced the 22.2 million shares it plans to sell at anywhere from $21 to $24 per share, giving it a market capitalization of anywhere from $6.6 billion to $7.6 billion, the report said.
In a statement, King said that their estimated net proceeds from the IPO is $326 million. The developer added, "We intend to use the net proceeds from this offering for working capital and other general corporate purposes, which may include acquisitions."
The most popular game by the developer is Candy Crush which, according to digital research and consultancy firm IDATE, amasses daily sales of $850,000. The very addictive game, which now records 700 million sessions each day, merely began as a game on Facebook. The object of the game is simply to move sweets in a grid so that the user can get at least three sweets of the same kind in a row. Although the game itself is free, those who do use it can opt to pay for extra help so that they can pass through the game's over 500 levels, the report said.
VentureBeat reported that the Candy Crush Saga is largely credited for the growth of King's revenues. Last year, King posted profits of $568 million on revenues of $1.88 billion mostly because of the popularity of the game.
The planned IPO of King is the newest in a spate of Internet and gaming companies going public in the past three years. The most popular of these public debuts are that of social media platform Facebook and micro-blogging site Twitter, the report said.
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