GREE - japanischer Social Media Player - 500 Beiträge pro Seite

[R-BgO]

Tokyo,Japan-January 26,2011-GREE, Inc. (Headquarter: Minato-ku, Tokyo; president and Chief Executive Officer: Yoshikazu Tanaka; Listed in the First Section of Tokyo Stock Exchange; Code: 3632; Hereinafter called “GREE”) announced that it will have business collaboration with Tencent (Headquarters: Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China; CEO: Pony Ma Huateng ), one of the largest integrated Internet services providers in China.

Reasons for the business collaboration GREE is offering the “GREE Platform for Smartphone”, which allows GREE development partners (hereinafter referred to as “GREE partner”) to provide various apps to GREE users on the SNS “GREE” for Smartphone, Tencent aims to enrich the interactive online experience of Internet users in China by providing a comprehensive range of Internet and wireless value-added services.

Through its various online platforms, including Instant Messaging QQ, web portal QQ.com, QQ Game portal, multi-media social networking service Qzone and wireless portal, Tencent serves the largest online community in China and fulfills the user’s needs for communication, information, entertainment and e-Commerce on the Internet. The business collaboration between GREE and Tencent will facilitate the GREE partners’ development of social applications (hereinafter referred to as social apps) which apply the “GREE Platform for Smartphone” and the social apps provided by the Tencent Wireless Services Division to be compatible for both companies’ wireless SNS platforms. In China, over 120 million users play mobile games by the end of September 2010 (according to the research by Analysis International in 2010. http://www.eguan.cn/cache/1338/92881.html-), and the market is expected to grow. Through the collaboration with Tencent, GREE would like to establish a toehold for growth in the rapidly growing Chinese mobile game market and support the business expansion of the GREE partners. At the same time, GREE will strive to expand the domestic platform business.

GREE has already been promoting the global expansion of the business such as investment to the mobile SNS “mig33”, which has approximately 40 million members, centering on the emerging countries including Southeast Asian countries. In addition to this effort, by pursing collaboration with powerful domestic and global partners, GREE will aim at providing the best community service...

[imagen]

Gibt es die Plattform von Gree eigentlich auch auf Englisch oder nur auf japanisch über www.gree.jp? Bin bei meinen bescheidenen Google-Versuchen sowie über die Corporate-Seite von Green nicht fündig geworden.
Bin deswegen am Überlegen, ob Gree Chancen hat, weiter über das soziale Netzwerk expandieren zu können oder sich das Geschäftsmodell dann doch eher auf die Spiele-Apps beschränken wird.
Gruß, imagen

[R-BgO]

Thursday, November 15, 2012
Gree Reports 26% Profit Drop On Quarter, Lagging Rival DeNA


TOKYO (Nikkei)--Social networking game developer Gree Inc. (3632) said Wednesday that group net profit dipped 4% on the year to 9 billion yen in the July-September quarter, its first profit decline since going public in 2008.

Delays in launching games that comply with tougher new regulations and heavy investments in overseas operations were cited as major reasons behind the profit slide.

Sales rose 25% to 37.9 billion yen, thanks to the acquisition of major U.S. game developer Funzio Inc. the previous quarter. Yet operating profit decreased 5% to 15.7 billion yen.

"After hitting a bottom in July, monthly sales have been on a mild recovery path," President Yoshikazu Tanaka said. "We'll also bring overseas business costs to a more balanced level."

In late October, Gree announced plans to acquire Pokelabo Inc., a Tokyo-based major game developer, for 13.8 billion yen. The firm's performance is expected to be reflected in Gree's earnings starting in the October-December quarter.

Gree's July-September results pale in comparison with those of rival DeNA Co. (2432), which also had to deal with the new regulations, yet managed to boost net profit by 70% to 11.7 billion yen.

Compared with the previous quarter, Gree's July-September net profit fell 26%, marking a second consecutive decline. By contrast, DeNA's net profit climbed 17% from the previous quarter.

(The Nikkei, Nov. 15 morning edition)

[R-BgO]

http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/07/gree-layoffs-2/?utm_source=…

[R-BgO]

Japan’s Gree Founder Loses $2.6B on Mobile Gaming Miss
By Naoko Fujimura - Apr 23, 2013 11:56 AM GMT+0200


Junko Kimura/Bloomberg
Yoshikazu Tanaka, founder and chief executive officer of Gree Inc.

In five years, Yoshikazu Tanaka became Japan’s youngest billionaire as investors piled into Gree Inc. (3632) (3632), valuing his controlling stake in the early maker of phone- based games at $4 billion. Just 18 months later, that has shriveled to about $1.4 billion.

For a youngster -- at 36, he’s 12 years junior to the next on Japan’s billion-dollar list -- Tanaka was slow to pick up on the global smartphone craze. Half a decade after Apple Inc (AAPL).’s iPhone went on sale in Japan, Gree relies on the generation of handsets that preceded smartphones for 60 percent of revenue.

The company says it will make its first annual profit decline as consumers flock to games available through Apple’s App Store and Google Play, abandoning the social-network gaming platforms of Gree and rival DeNA Co. that once dominated the local market. Since their November 2011 peak, Tokyo-based Gree’s shares have slumped more than half, the worst performer of 108 members in their industry group on the Topix Index.

“They’re up against Apple, they’re up against Google,” said David Gibson, a Tokyo-based analyst at Macquarie Group Ltd. who advises investors sell both Gree and DeNA and forecasts a 25 percent drop in the shares in the coming year. “We’re moving into an industry structure of anywhere up to potentially nine players doing mobile games now.”

Investor euphoria over Japan’s new government and its policies to spark growth has passed Gree by. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average is off to its best start to a year in more than four decades. Gree’s drop from its peak is almost the reverse of the gauge’s 55 percent rise.


Introducing Titles
Currencies haven’t helped Tanaka either: a week before Gree’s shares peaked, the yen hit a post-war high and has since slid 21 percent. That exacerbated the decline of Tanaka’s 48 percent stake in dollar terms. He hasn’t reduced his holdings as the value has fallen by about 180 billion yen since the peak.

Net income may reach as low as 31 billion yen ($311 million) in the year ending June 30, from 48 billion yen a year earlier, Gree said Feb. 12. That’s the first drop since the company went public in 2008. Gree closed today at 1,244 yen, down from its peak of 2,840 yen in November 2011.

The developer of “Fishing Star” and “Driland” is trying to increase game downloads by introducing more titles, said Shinichi Iriyama, a spokesman. The company declined to make Tanaka available for an interview.

Founded in 2004, Gree started as a social-networking service for mobile phones and began offering games through its networking platform three years later. The company introduced its first game application for smartphones in 2010, a year after Rovio Entertainment Oy’s “Angry Birds” debuted. It also offers games that can be played in Web browsers.


Smartphone Subscribers
The number of smartphone subscribers in Japan surged to 37 percent of all contracts as of March 31 from 3 percent three years earlier, according to Tokyo-based MM Research Institute Ltd. The proportion may grow to 58 percent in March 2015 and to 65 percent in March 2016, the researcher said. Global smartphone sales will probably rise 28 percent this year to 836 million units, according to IHS Inc.’s iSuppli.

“Both Gree and DeNA will be badly impacted by rising penetration rates of smartphones,” said Amir Anvarzadeh, a Singapore-based manager for Asia equity sales at BGC Partners Inc. The market for smartphone games is “hugely crowded,” he said.

DeNA (2432) has fallen 0.6 percent this year. Net income may rise 44 percent to 44.8 billion yen for the year ended March 31, it said in February. The company is expanding services by offering free Internet calls and online music distribution and cooperating with developers such as Cygames Inc. and Nexon Co. in mobile games.


Mobile-Game Market
Japan’s mobile-game market may have expanded 37 percent to 387 billion yen in the year ended March and may grow 10 percent this fiscal year, according to a forecast by Yano Research Institute Ltd. in January.

Although the market is growing, Gree and Dena’s revenue may stagnate as they’ve lost their duopoly on Japanese mobile games, Macquarie’s Gibson said. He expects Gree’s shares to decline to 925 yen by Feb. 13, the second-most bearish of 13 analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

Naoshi Nema, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald LP, expects the shares to drop to 800 yen. That would cut the value of Tanaka’s current stake to about 90 billion yen -- $912 million at today’s yen rate.

“We’re most concerned by the social-game companies such as DeNA and Gree,” Nema said in a March 7 report. “The Japanese market does not have enough room to expand their subscriber base in any meaningful way.”


‘Puzzle & Dragons’
Tanaka, who pioneered social-network gaming for mobile phones in 2007, first browsed the Internet in 1996 while visiting the U.S. Three years later, he graduated from Japan’s Nihon University with a bachelor’s degree in law, according to Gree’s website. Before founding Gree, he worked at Sony Corp. (6758)’s Internet unit and online retailer Rakuten Inc.

Tanaka is Japan’s youngest billionaire, according to a March ranking by Forbes magazine. The next youngest is Rakuten’s 48-year-old President Hiroshi Mikitani, with a fortune of $5.6 billion, according to the magazine’s ratings.

Gree is hiring more engineers to strengthen mobile-game development, it said in February. The company introduced titles including the “Sumo” card game and Namco Bandai Holdings Inc. (7832)’s “One Piece Adventure Log” in the second half of the fiscal year ending June 30.


Gambling Feature
Development efforts have been delayed as Gree and Japanese rivals had to remove a feature from their games under pressure from regulators. Japan’s Consumer Affairs Agency said in May 2012 that a sales-generating game feature known as “comp gacha” (pronounced “gotcha”) may have been illegal due to its similarity to gambling, prompting companies including Gree and DeNA to abandon it.

Gree is also trying to boost game offerings by buying smaller developers. Since 2009, the company has acquired stakes in 17 companies, including Pokelabo Inc. and Funzio Inc., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
In February, Gree formed a mobile-game partnership with Yahoo Japan Corp (4689)., Japan’s biggest Web portal. The game developer tied up with Pac-Man creator Namco Bandai (7832), Toei Animation Co. and broadcaster TV Tokyo Holdings Corp. last month to start an animated program and sell related merchandise.


‘Very Cheap’
“Gree is investing aggressively for future growth,” said Keiichi Yoneshima, a Tokyo-based analyst at Barclays Plc, who expects the shares to climb to 1,600 yen, the fourth-highest of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. “The valuation of the company’s shares is very cheap.”

Gree trades at 6.6 times most-recent earnings, about a quarter the cost of the Topix.

Although the social-game market in Japan won’t return to past growth rates, Gree and DeNA, also based in Tokyo, still have opportunities as the mobile-game market continues to expand, Yoneshima said.

Even so, at least one early backer of Gree is reducing its stake. KDDI Corp (3632)., Japan’s second-largest mobile-phone company, said Feb. 19 it will sell half its 6.8 percent stake in the game developer by May 12.

KDDI is selling the holding to book an investment profit, and there won’t be any change in the relationship between the companies, said the Tokyo-based wireless carrier, which invested in Gree in 2006, before the game developer went public.

By contrast, SoftBank Corp. (9984), the nation’s No. 3 wireless carrier, will spend as much as 25 billion yen to raise its stake in game developer Gungho Online Entertainment Inc (3765). and make it a subsidiary, the mobile-phone company said March 25.


Gungho Profit
Gungho boosted operating profit almost eightfold to 9.3 billion yen last year on the rising popularity of its “Puzzle & Dragons” game, it said Feb. 14. The game, available through the App Store and Google Play as well as Amazon.com Inc.’s Kindle Store., reached 12 million downloads in Japan as of April 9, the company said April 11.
KDDI and Softbank’s moves are indicative of the future of mobile gaming, Macquarie’s Gibson said.

“The industry is changing away from existing platforms onto the new,” Gibson said. “I think Softbank and KDDI recognize that.”

[R-BgO]

immer weiter in den Keller

[R-BgO]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 48.944.672 von R-BgO am 31.01.15 22:16:23

HJ-Zahlen kamen vergangenen Mittwoch, der Abstieg scheint sich zu verlangsamen;

allerdings dicke goodwill-Abschreibung, die zu netto-break-even fürs laufende GJ führen wird;

bleibe vorläufig dabei (aktuell 64% im minus)

[R-BgO]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 49.018.592 von R-BgO am 09.02.15 13:14:13

für das gerade beendete Geschäftsjahr

haben sie einen Nettogewinn von 11,5 Mrd. Yen vorhergesagt;

das käme auf ein KGV von rund 11 raus

[R-BgO]

Antwort auf Beitrag Nr.: 52.842.160 von R-BgO am 15.07.16 15:22:40

geworden sind es 8,5

[R-BgO]

aktuelles KGV rund 14, wobei 70% der Bilanzsumme cash sind

[R-BgO]

inzwischen fast 100% cash & investments

[R-BgO]

das Geschäft verdampft weiter

ins Nichts