 "'Candy Crush Saga' creator King.com may price US IPO at $24/share")
King Digital Entertainment Plc, best known for the hit mobile phone game Candy Crush Saga, said it expects to price its US initial public offering of 22.2 million shares at between $21 and $24 per share.
King, founded in Sweden in 2003, will have an equity valuation of $7.56 billion at the top end of the price range.
The company will offer 15.5 million shares in the offering, with the rest being sold by selling stockholders, including Apax Ventures, King said in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.
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King Digital Entertainment PLC did not disclose how many shares it expects to offer in the IPO or a projected price range for the stock.[/caption]
Online technology companies are rushing to the stock market on the backs of Twitter Inc’s announcement earlier this month that it plans to go public in the most eagerly anticipated IPO since last year’s flotation of Facebook Inc.
Emerging growth companies such as King can use a secretive IPO registration process in the US thanks to the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, which loosened a number of federal securities regulations in hopes of boosting capital raising and thereby increasing job growth.
King has hired Bank of America Merrill Lynch Corp, Credit Suisse Group AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co to lead the offering, said the person, confirming an earlier report by the Daily Telegraph and asking not to be identified because the information is confidential.
Representatives for King and the banks either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.
King offers 150 games in 14 languages through mobile phones, Facebook and its website. It boasts more than 1 billion gameplays per day from its users.
The company’s games appeal to a growing trend for players to play puzzles with their friends in short bursts, especially as games are increasingly played on the move on phones or tablets to kill spare minutes.
Rival Zynga Inc went public two years ago in a high-profile IPO that raised $1 billion. Since then, Zynga has suffered from sagging morale during several quarters of worsening performance and repeated waves of layoffs.
Founded in 2003, King has been profitable since 2005 and has not had a funding round since September of that year, when it raised 34 million euros ($46.04 million) from investment firms Apax Partners and Index Ventures.
With inputs from Reuters and other agencies