The maker of Candy Crush Saga, the hugely popular puzzle game, said on Wednesday that it hoped to raise as much as $532.8 million in its initial public offering, valuing the company at nearly $7.6 billion.
In a revised prospectus, the company, King Digital Entertainment, said it planned to price its shares at $21 to $24 apiece. At the midpoint of that range, the company would raise $499.5 million and be valued at roughly $7.1 billion.
Should demand prove higher than unexpected, the game developer’s underwriters can sell additional shares in what is known as a greenshoe option, pushing the maximum size of the offering up to $612 million.
If King sells its shares at the top of its expected range, then investors would value King roughly 54 percent more than they do Zynga, the last mobile game giant to go public. And its market value would be only $2 billion less than that of Electronic Arts, the longtime veteran of the video game industry.
That would be a testament to the meteoric success of Candy Crush Saga, which draws an average of 97 million users every day trying to line up three pieces of matching virtual sugar.
But King’s disclosures have led many analysts to question whether the game maker can continue to thrive as a public company once its biggest hit begins to fade in popularity. Its second most popular hit, Farm Heroes Saga, counts an average of 20 million active users a day.
The company plans to list its stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol KING.
JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse and Bank of America Merrill Lynch are leading the offering.
