King Digital Entertainment Plc., the maker of popular smartphone games including “Candy Crush Saga” and “Pet Rescue Saga,” is beginning an adventure of its own on a path to becoming a public company.
The company filed to raise $500 million in an initial public offering in the U.S. today -- a figure that’s a placeholder used to calculate fees and may change. Dublin-based King, which plans to use the funds for working capital and acquisitions, applied to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol KING.
King’s most popular game is “Candy Crush Saga,” which made up 78 percent of cash spent by players at the company last year, according to a prospectus disclosed today. Demand for the puzzle game, which features different colored candies, drove an elevenfold surge in revenue in 2013 to $1.9 billion. While King says it intends to diversify its games, the reliance on few titles for revenue is listed as a risk factor in the prospectus.
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