Playdom revenue expected to reach $50 million this year
Company will grow in size 5-10 fold in space of one year, says CEO
Social gaming firm Playdom has said it will report revenues in excess of USD 50 million this year.
Speaking to Silicon Alley Insider, Playdom CEO John Pleasants said the company has tripled in size in the last three months and is expected to grow overall by five to ten fold in the space of one year.
"We have about 28 million users a month right now. We have about 220 full time people, rapidly growing. We have north of USD 50 million in revenue this year. We are profitable," said Pleasants, who joined the company from EA earlier this year.
90 per cent of revenue comes from the sale of virtual goods, he said, while 10 per cent comes from third party advertisers.
The company's conversion rate of paying to non-paying users of its games tends to be around 1-4 per cent and average revenue per user is around USD 20 - or around USD 0.20-0.25 per month when averaged with all the non-paying users, he revealed.
In terms of the casual market overall, Pleasants estimates the western market is worth somewhere between USD 0.5 - 1 billion presently and growing more than 100 per cent a year.
"All the metrics are moving in the right way," he said. "That starts with internet penetration worldwide, followed by social networking penetration, followed by per cent of users of social networks that play games, followed by per cent of people who pay inside of these games, followed by how many games they play per month, followed by ARPU per paying user.
"Add it all up; they're all growing and if each of those things goes up, you know, 20 or 30 per cent or whatever the respective numbers are, it adds to 5-10x of the category over a three to four year period of time."
Last month Playdom, which runs 15 social network games, including Mobsters and Sorority Life, raised investment of USD 43 million which it said would be used to finance acquisitions and expand its portfolio of titles.
It subsequently bought two companies - Facebook developer Green Patch and iPhone developer Trippert Labs.