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spk07: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to Zynga's fourth quarter and full year 2020 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star zero. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Rebecca Lau, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Finance. Please go ahead, ma'am.
spk04: Thank you, Josh, and welcome everyone to Zynga's fourth quarter and full year 2020 earnings call. On the call with me today are Frank Jabot, our Chief Executive Officer, and Jared Griffin, our Chief Financial Officer. Shortly, we will open up the call for live questions. Before we cover the safe harbor, please note that in an effort to keep our team members healthy, each member on today's call is dialed in remotely. We appreciate your understanding during the call and hope that everyone is staying safe during this time. During the course of today's call, we will make forward-looking statements related to our business plan and strategy, as well as expectations for our future performance. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted. Please review the risk factors in our most recently filed Form 10-Q, as well as elsewhere in our SEC filings for further clarification. In addition, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures. Our earnings letter, earnings slides, and when filed, our 10-K will include reconciliations of our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Please be sure to look at these reconciliations as the non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for or superior to our GAAP results. This conference call is being webcasted and will be available for audio replay on our investor relations website in a few hours. Now I'll turn over the call to Frank for his opening remarks.
spk03: Thank you, Rebecca. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our Q4 earnings call. 2020 was an unprecedented year of uncertainty, loss, and change. It was also the year when more people than ever before turned to games for entertainment, social connection, and a sense of community. I could not be more proud of how Zynga has responded to the challenges of the global pandemic with focused execution, strong teamwork, and delivering high-quality live services to our players. Our team seamlessly transitioned to work from home in early March and continued to deliver on our mission to connect the world through games while achieving one of the strongest performances in Zynga history. Our execution in Q4 and throughout 2020 has added meaningful scale to our live services platform, expanded our global footprint, and strengthened our position as one of the leading mobile game publishers in the world. Q4 capped off a truly transformational year for Zynga. In the quarter, we achieved our highest revenue of $616 million of 52% year-over-year, and record bookings of 699 million, up 61% year over year. Our results were well ahead of guidance across all key financial measures, led by an all-time best revenue and bookings quarter for Words with Friends. In addition, we delivered record Q4 performances by Empires and Puzzles and CSR2, as well as our social slots and casual cards portfolios. Building upon its successful launch in September, Harry Potter Puzzles and Spells continued to gain momentum as players engaged with its highly social and innovative gameplay. Advertising in Q4 was also a key growth contributor, driven by strong seasonality and advertising yield, as well as an excellent performance from Rollick in its first full quarter at Zynga. In 2020, strong organic growth across our live services, coupled with contributions from our acquisitions of Peak, and Rolick drove our highest annual revenue of $1.97 billion of 49% year-over-year and record bookings of $2.27 billion of 45% year-over-year. We also generated our best-ever annual operating cash flow of $429 million of 63% year-over-year and added $794 million in net proceeds through a convertible notes offering in December, ending the year with approximately $1.57 billion of cash and investments. Execution of our multi-year growth strategy has driven our tremendous results to date, while providing strong momentum for additional growth ahead. In 2021 and beyond, we are focused on continuing to drive recurring growth from our live services foundation and launching new titles from our exciting new game pipeline. In addition, we are investing in new transformational growth opportunities based on key megatrends within interactive entertainment. These initiatives include our investments in hypercasual games, cross-platform play, international expansion, and building an advertising network, all of which have the ability to meaningfully increase Zynga's total addressable market while adding new capabilities to further grow our business. First, we are continuing to drive recurring growth from our live services foundation. One of Zynga's core competitive advantages is our ability to create forever franchises that are highly engaging and can predictably deliver sustainable growth over long periods of time. A great example of this is Words with Friends. In 2020, the franchise delivered its best ever annual revenue and bookings performance in more than 11 years since its launch in 2009. A key driver of this performance was our steady release of new bold beats, including an innovative rewards path, which gives players themed paths to play and rewards to unlock. Looking ahead, we are entering 2021 with a much larger and more diverse portfolio of live services, now anchored by eight forever franchises, including CSR Racing, Empires and Puzzles, Merge Dragons, Merge Magic, Toon Blast, Toy Blast, Words with Friends, and Zynga Poker. We are focused on executing our bold beat strategy across our portfolio and are confident in our ability to drive recurring growth collectively across our live services. second we are launching new titles from our exciting new game pipeline our goal is to create new forever franchises to add to our live services portfolio and our latest release harry potter puzzles and spells is off to a great start and will be a meaningful growth contributor in 2021 and beyond coming up next from our new game pipeline are puzzle combat and farmville 3. both titles have been progressing well in soft launch and are on track to release worldwide in the first half of 2021. We also expect our first Star Wars game to enter soft launch in early summer with the potential to release by the end of the year. Going forward, we expect new games to be a meaningful growth driver and have additional games in development at Natural Motion, Graham Games, Small Giant, Peak, and Zynga Studios. Third, we anticipate hypercasual will be one of the fastest growth opportunities for Zynga. Hypercasual games are highly accessible, driven by simple concepts that are easy to play, and appeal to large and diverse audiences of players, many of whom may be first-time mobile gamers. With our acquisition of Rollick, we ended 2020 with three of the top 50 downloaded US iPhone games, and so far in Q1, two of our new hypercasual titles, High Heels and Blob Runner 3D, have already reached the number one and number two top downloaded US game positions on Android and iOS. In 2021 and beyond, we will build on Rolex momentum and expect this new hypercasual audience to supercharge Zynga's live services platform by meaningfully expanding our user acquisition funnel, cross-promotion opportunities, and advertising inventory. Fourth, we are actively developing cross-platform play games, which will further expand our total addressable market. Gamers have been excited to seamlessly play across mobile PCs and consoles for a long time, and recent innovations in technology, including 5G, make this a reality. Today, many of the largest interactive entertainment properties in the world are free-to-play cross-platform play experiences. Zynga is well positioned to successfully enter this category because one, we have iconic licenses and brands. Two, our teams have strong multi-platform experience. Three, we are already using proven cross-platform play tools and technologies such as Unity, Unreal, and AWS. And four, we have over a decade of experience building and operating free-to-play live services. Executing on this opportunity has the potential to meaningfully increase our total addressable market and drive stronger top line and overall operating margins. Fifth, we are expanding our live services portfolio in international markets and see this as a tremendous growth opportunity. In 2020, we grew our international revenue in bookings to their largest scale in Zynga history. A key driver of this performance was our growth in Asia. where we continue to enhance our ability to self-publish titles, including Toon Blast, which was the most downloaded game in Japan on Android in 2020, and Empires and Puzzles, which continued to perform well throughout the year. More recently, Harry Potter Puzzles and Spells is showing positive engagement in Japan and South Korea. Over the coming years, we see more opportunities to expand into international markets as we execute on our growth strategies. Sixth, we are investing in new technologies and solutions to build an advertising network. At the core of Zynga's live services platform is our first-party data network, which captures key insights about how our players are interacting with our games. We use this data to deliver highly engaging interactive experiences for our players, optimize our user acquisition, and determine how best to monetize our games, including advertising. In Q4 2020, we more than doubled our average monthly mobile active users year over year to 134 million, significantly expanding our first-party data network and player insights. This increased audience scale coupled with our diversified portfolio of live services and best-in-class data science capabilities gives us every confidence in our ability to navigate upcoming privacy changes and to continue to grow our advertising business. Furthermore, by building an advertising network, we will unlock more value from our portfolio games and capture more of the economics in the mobile advertising ecosystem. Overall, Zynga is uniquely positioned to capitalize on key megatrends in interactive entertainment by executing on our growth initiatives of live services, new game development, hyper-casual games, cross-platform play, international expansion, and building an advertising network we see an organic opportunity to more than double the value of our company. Finally, we see more opportunities to acquire talented teams, technologies, and franchises to further expand our capabilities and accelerate our growth. We have a strong track record of executing accretive acquisitions, including Graham Games, Small Giant Games, Peak, and Rollick, which have each strengthened our life services platform and demonstrated our ability to collectively grow faster together. Looking ahead, we see more opportunities to continue to be a leading consolidator and a destination of choice for developers in this dynamic interactive entertainment industry. I am extremely excited for Zynga's next phase of growth, and I'm confident in our ability to generate more value for our players, teams, and shareholders over the long term. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Jer to discuss our results in more detail as well as our outlook for the coming year.
spk02: Thank you, Frank. Q4 capped off a transformational year for Zynga as we delivered our highest quarterly and annual revenue bookings and operating cash flow in Zynga history. Our Q4 results were well ahead of our guidance across all key financial measures driven by strength in our live services coupled with strong advertising results. Revenue was $616 million up 52 million year-over-year, comprised of bookings of 699 million, up 61% year-over-year, offset by a net increase in deferred revenue of 83 million, up 187% year-over-year. Revenue was 46 million ahead of our guidance, driven by a 29 million better-than-expected bookings performance and a net increase in deferred revenue of 17 million, lower than expected. Live services drove our record results with stronger than anticipated performances from Rolex Hypercasual Portfolio, Empires and Puzzles, Words with Friends, and Harry Potter Puzzles and Spells driving our top line beat versus guidance. We generated our highest ever user pay revenue of $499 million, up 54% year over year, and user pay bookings of $582 million, up 64% year over year. We delivered record advertising revenue and bookings of 117 million, up 47% year over year. Our stellar advertising performance was driven by strong advertising seasonality and yields, as well as an excellent performance from Rolex's hyper-casual portfolio in its first quarter at Zynga. The primary drivers of our net increase in deferred revenue were bookings from Toon Blast, Toy Blast, and Harry Potter Puzzles and Spells. We ended the year with a deferred revenue balance of $748 million versus $434 million a year ago. Turning to our Q4 operating expenses. GAAP operating expenses were $393 million up $135 million or 52% year-over-year, while non-GAAP operating expenses were $331 million up $124 million or 60% year-over-year. The primary driver of the euro via increase in gap and non gap operating expenses is the step up driven by incremental expenses from our recent acquisitions of peak and rollick. outside of this step up for investments, excuse me for acquisitions, the other drivers were the launch marketing for Harry Potter puzzles and spells and a slight ramp in r&d investments in our new game pipeline. Year over year, GAAP operating expenses were broadly flat at 64% of revenue, and non-GAAP operating expenses decreased from 48% to 47% of bookings. For both GAAP and non-GAAP operating expenses, we delivered stronger operating leverage from R&D and G&A, largely offset by higher marketing investments year over year. Our strong operating performance and lower than expected net increase in deferred revenue was the primary driver of our better-than-expected profitability, where we delivered a net loss of $53 million, $39 million better than our guidance, and adjusted EBITDA of $90 million, $55 million better than our guidance. We generated record quarterly operating cash flow of $206 million, up 119% year-over-year. In December, we issued $875 million of convertible notes to strong investor demand. providing net cash proceeds of $794 million after the cost of the cap call transactions and the associated issuance fees. We also entered into a new $425 million credit facility with an expanded syndicated banks, which replaced the existing $150 million facility. We ended the year with cash and investments of $1.57 billion, which we anticipate will be used primarily to fund future acquisitions and strategic investments to further accelerate our growth. Turning to guidance. We have developed our Q1 and full year 21 guidance based on the information available to us today, February 10th, 2021, and on a similar methodology to prior quarters. Given the higher level of volatility and uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic, there is the potential for a wider range of outcomes, both positive and negative, as it relates to our ultimate business results. That said, 2021 guidance is as follows. Revenue of 2.6 billion, up 625 million or 32% year over year. In that increase in deferred revenue of 200 million, down 95 million or 32% year over year. Bookings of 2.8 billion, up 530 million or 23% year over year. In that loss of 150 million, versus a net loss of $429 million in 2020. Adjusted EBITDA of $450 million, up $184 million, are 69% year over year. We expect live services to drive the vast majority of our top line performance. This will be driven primarily by full quarter contributions from Toon Blast, Toy Blast, Rolex Hypercasual Portfolio, and Harry Potter Puzzles and Spells. as well as modest growth across the remainder of our live services. These games will be partially offset by declines in older mobile and web titles. Our guidance also assumes moderate initial top-line contributions from Puzzle Combat and Farmville 3, which are targeted to launch in the first half of 2021, as well as the potential launch of our first Star Wars game by the end of the year. From an advertising perspective, our guidance assumes that the upcoming changes to IDFA will create some pressure on advertising yields, but we expect this impact to be short lived. Our teams have multiple strategies that should more than offset this potential headwind, including yield optimizations and the opportunities to expand our advertising inventory. All in, we expect to meaningfully grow our advertising revenue of bookings driven by primarily by a full year contribution from our hyper casual titles, as well as growth across the rest of our portfolio. We anticipate an increase in our gross margins due to lower net increase in deferred revenue and higher mix of advertising versus user pay, partially offset by higher amortization expense for acquired intangible assets. In 2021, Our ultimate operating leverage will primarily be a function of our live service performance, user pay versus advertising mix, level of investment against new growth initiatives, the timing of new game launches, and the level of marketing investment applied to scale new titles and our live services. While we expect to deliver strong absolute year-on-year growth in profitability and expand our GAAP operating margins, we anticipate moderate compression to non-GAAP operating margins as we invest in launch marketing to scale new games launched in 21, continue to invest in our new games in development, and ramp investment in a number of key growth initiatives. In particular, cross-platform play development, hyper-casual games, as well as advertising technologies and solutions. With that said, we expect to see improvements in operating leverage from R&D and G&A, which will be more than offset by higher marketing investments. Our guidance also assumes that we will see higher operating margins in the second half of the year as greater top line scale provides stronger operating leverage. In absolute terms, we expect to deliver significant improvement in profitability with a net loss of 150 million, 279 million better than a year ago and adjusted EBITDA of 450 million up 184 million or 69% year over year. Execution of our 2021 plan will deliver another year of double-digit growth. It will also position us for continued growth in 2022, where we expect low double-digit top-line organic growth, as well as improved operating leverage from our live services, which will include full-year contributions from our 2021 new game launches. Over the next several years, we expect to continue progressing towards achieving our longer-term operating margin goals while generating stronger operating cash flow. Now for Q1 guidance, which is as follows. Revenue of $635 million up $231 million or 57% year over year. And that increase in deferred revenue of $45 million versus $21 million a year ago. Bookings of $680 million up $255 million or 60% year over year. And that loss of $50 million versus a net loss of $104 million in the prior year quarter. adjusted EBITDA of 100 million, up 32 million, or 46% year-over-year. Our top-line performance will be driven by continued strength collectively across our live services, as well as year-over-year additions of Toon Blast, Toy Blast, Harry Potter Puzzles and Spells, as well as existing and new hyper-casual games from Rollick. These games will be partially offset by declines in older mobile and web titles. Our top line guidance does not assume any meaningful contribution from our games currently in soft launch. We expect gross margins to be down year over year, primarily due to a higher amortization expense for acquired intangible assets and the net increase in deferred revenue, partially offset by the impact of a higher advertising mix. We expect our gap operating expenses as a percentage of revenue to significantly improve year over year, primarily due to lower contingent consideration expense partially offset by higher stock-based compensation. Outside of these factors, we expect improvements in year-over-year operating leverage in R&D and G&A, which should be more than offset by higher marketing expenses as we continue to invest in our live services, including growth marketing and Harry Potter puzzles and spells, as well as investment against our existing and new hyper-casual games from Rollick. We also plan to spend modest test marketing on our titles and soft launch. In absolute terms, we expect to deliver significant improvement in profitability with a net loss of 50 million, 54 million better than a year ago, and adjusted EBITDA of 145 million, up 32 million or 46% year over year. In conclusion, we are very pleased with the progress we are making against all aspects of our multi-year growth strategy and look forward to continuing that momentum in 2021 with another year of double-digit top-line growth and strong year-over-year growth and profitability. With that, we will open the call to your questions.
spk07: Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press the pound key. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Colin Sebastian with Baird. You may proceed with your question.
spk10: Thanks, and good afternoon, everyone. Two questions for me, please. First off, on Harry Potter, you talked about the strong start to the game, that it'll be a meaningful contributor to growth in 2021. If you could perhaps expand a bit on the live services and what's driving both usage and monetization in a way that gives you confidence in that outlook. And then secondly, on the investments in advertising tech and solutions, are those internally developed initiatives or do you need to acquire some of that infrastructure? And in the meantime, Jer, how much of an impact from the pending Apple changes are you embedding in Q1 and full-year outlooks? Thanks.
spk03: Hey, Colin. This is Frank. I'll take the first two questions, and I think the third point about the ad impact Jer can finish up with. In terms of Harry Potter, what we're seeing is inside the game service is very strong engagement and retention metrics. and very good conversion and monetization. We have several features in the product that have really, really excited players and driven very high levels of interaction and competition. And we have a very strong calendar of bold beats planned for the rest of the year. So based on the KPIs, the trends that we're seeing, the way that the cohorts are acquiring and retaining, we feel very good about the start and the sustainability of that start for Harry Potter. We're not yet calling it a forever franchise, but it's certainly on trend in that direction. In terms of the second question about how we're going to build out our advertising network, right now we obviously have a very robust set of inventory inside of our games and an optimization layer for engagement. But as we look to build out from there, we're going to be looking at key components of technology related to the demand side, the supply side, the exchange, also looking at attribution. And some of these are going to be technologies that we build internally. Some of them are going to be off-the-shelf incorporation of existing technologies, but we're also looking at acquisition as a potential opportunity to accelerate in key areas and also to potentially add additional scale to this initiative that we think will be a powerful growth driver for us in 21 and beyond.
spk02: Yeah, in terms of the impact from changes Apple is planning to roll out, in terms of Q1, there isn't much impact in that quarter. As it relates to the rest of the year, we're expecting modest pressure, but we do expect to grow our advertising business with or without Rolex. So from that point of view, It's one of a number of dynamics going on in our business, both positive and negative, but we believe there's modest pressure, but it's something that we believe we can cover with all of the other levers we have at our beck and call.
spk07: Okay, thanks, guys. Thank you. Our next question comes from Mario Liu with Barclays. You may proceed with your question.
spk06: Great. Thanks for taking the questions. I have one on cross-platform and one on subscription. So for the first one on cross-platform, you guys mentioned you guys are investing into it. So any particular studio at Zynga that are creating those games, and are they completely new games or existing Zynga titles that would be made cross-platform? And then on subscription, more and more companies are implementing share subscription models like Fortnite Crew and Roblox Premium. What are your thoughts on subscription overall? And do you think single titles like Empires and Puzzles can see something like this implemented?
spk02: Frank, it looks like you're on mute.
spk03: Hi, Mario. This is a question on cross-platform. Natural Motion is our lead studio for that effort. They are driving a lot of the development as we undertake a number of these projects. They've published games in Unity and Unreal. They have a very high percentage of their development community, having worked on console and PC games in the past. The titles that we're contemplating here are new titles to Zynga, and we'll be starting to look at those titles rolling out more towards the end of 21 and then scaling up from there. In terms of your second question about subscription, the place that we are experimenting a great deal is with season passes. The rewards pass that you saw in Words with Friends that came out in Q4 and was a key driver of that success is the state of where we're at on subscriptions. We think that eventually subscriptions are possible in our business, but it's one of the things that we're easing into as we expand the number of season passes across our businesses, which was initially successful in Empires and Puzzles, and we've expanded it to Graham, Words of Friends, and we're looking at future opportunities in addition to that.
spk07: Great. Thanks, Frank. Thank you. Our next question comes from Drew Crum with Stiefel. You may proceed with your question.
spk09: Okay, thanks. Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. So, Frank, you listed five separate studios, I think, that are working on new games, but you haven't revealed what any of those are. Does that suggest these are just very early stage and hence will not be part of the 2022 plan? And then any more detail you're willing to provide on the new Star Wars game? And then separately for Jer, the 2022 low double-digit growth rate you're forecasting, Given all the investments for making a new initiative on top of the eight forever franchises, is that low double digits rate a reasonable longer-term notional model for the business?
spk03: Thanks. Thanks, Drew. For the first question, we did list the number of the studios that are working on titles. These are titles that are in various states of development. Until we have a firm fix on when we would be able to enter soft launch, For those games, we typically don't talk externally about them. But the idea really was to call out the fact that we have a multi-year new product pipeline. We're really looking at not just the releases in 21, but 22, 23, and 24, and have starts in all of these different studios against that. Some of them are new brands. Some of them are brands that people would be familiar with. So we feel very good about the mix. And as we get closer to releasing some of these titles to soft launch and test, we'll be more explicit about what those titles are and from where they're coming. In terms of Star Wars, there'll be more news on the Star Wars title as we progress into the first part of this year. But at this time, that's about what we're going to disclose.
spk02: Drew, in terms of thinking about the out years, our ambition every year is to grow our live service and layer in new games into that live service space over time, based on what Frank just said in terms of the new game pipeline. So from an organic perspective, yes, the ambition each year would be to deliver double-digit growth for the foreseeable future, in particular when you start layering in the potential also from hyper-casual, cross-platform, and international. So the way we think about our business is we have a variety of fairly exciting levers to lean into in terms of driving top-line growth and ultimately expand margins as well. So that's the game plan. We obviously do have the opportunity to use the balance sheet to go bring some more talented teams to Zango over time.
spk09: Great. Thanks, guys.
spk07: Thank you. Our next question comes from Matthew Cost with Morgan Stanley. You may proceed with your question.
spk08: Hi, guys. Congrats on the quarter. Thanks for taking the questions. Two, if I could. You mentioned in the letter you expect modest growth on the remainder of the portfolio in 21. That's excluding Peak, Rollick, and Potter. Um, obviously 20 was, you know, such an incredibly strong year, you know, it seems definitely for, for kind of that, you know, uh, legacy portfolio and some of those, you know, core games that have been in there for a long time. How would you, how do you get comfortable, you know, uh, you know, thinking about the drivers of growth into 21, given the concept they're against and how should we think about that? And then the second one is just, you know, on the international side, I was, you know, a great quarter, you know, with international at 57%, you guys have You know, obviously made a lot of progress there in the past year or two. You know, what are the key challenges that you're still up against in Asia and sort of key execution points you feel you still need to negotiate to really have it be one of your main drivers of growth going forward? Thanks.
spk02: Hey, this is Gerald. I'll take the first question as it relates to, you know, growth across live services. Absolutely. 2020 was a very strong year for Zengen, our live services, both from an execution on the ball beats, but obviously with shelter in place as well. But as we think about next year, and it was the same in Q4 and as we go into this year, our strategy since day one has been focused on the players and the games we have in the marketplace, focused on driving meaningful ball beats into those games. and continue to innovate in those games. That's fundamental to our strategy. It effectively drove most of the growth outside of acquisitions for the first phase of our growth. And that's going to be continuing to be the same situation going into next year. So while the baseline absolutely was raised based on some of the shelter in place dynamics, it was also raised based on our execution of ball beats and You know, each of our games has its own cadence and planned ball beats. And we take each of these games and each of these ball beats with the same focus in terms of talent and execution that we do against our new games. And so that's why we feel good about being able to, you know, obviously whole serve and deliver growth into, you know, the CoreLive business.
spk03: Yeah, Matthew, in terms of international games, You know, I think we tend to think of it in terms of opportunities. It's really a function of getting the titles in terms of new game pipeline really in a position where they're fully culturalized, that we have a very specific go-to-market strategy for each country. And then, you know, the good news long-term is that a lot of the territories in Asia are moving to much more of a performance marketing model. So it's a lot easier for a company like ourselves to come in and be able to acquire users and work with local partners to drive success. That's what you've seen with the success that we had this year with the peak titles in Japan as well as Empires and Puzzles and the good start that Harry Potter is starting to see. Longer term, I think the opportunity is we need a strategy for China. Right now we we do well in Japan and South Korea Taiwan and Southeast Asia Understanding how and will operate in China is really a function that I think long term will be positive for us in the short term We're just navigating the the particular dynamics that are a play there and then further out as India Continues to double its gaming market every year. We see that as a real opportunity for for us to leverage our local studio there. We have almost 600 developers in India. That, I think, will give us a long-term edge in terms of being able to build out a business in India that will contribute to us. Thinking further afield, we do see opportunities in the Middle East, in the Americas, as well as even budding markets in Africa, where long-term, this is part of the beauty of mobile, is these are high-performance networks. You're getting high-performance, inexpensive smart devices going out. You're seeing increased purchasing power. And we think that our brands and products long-term will succeed there. And it's a matter of really creating the right go-to-market strategies and maximizing local conditions. So we're very, very excited about the opportunity to grow further there.
spk04: Great. Thanks.
spk07: Thank you. Our next question comes from Mike Ning with Golden Sachs, you may proceed with your question.
spk01: Hi, good afternoon. Thank you very much for the question. I just wanted to ask about hypercasual, which you cited as a transformational growth opportunity. Could you just talk about what you learned about the hypercasual category, particularly in this last quarter, that merits this additional investment? Is there something strategic about the category that as it relates to either user acquisition or building out the advertising network that gets you excited about it. And then as a follow-up to that, is there an update for how much Rolick is pacing in terms of annualized revenue? Thank you.
spk03: Yeah, Mike, I'll take the first question, and Jared can take the second. In terms of what we like about hypercasual – The team at Rollick is spectacular. They have an absolutely fantastic culture, great leadership, and their knowledge about the category is really phenomenal. We've learned a great deal from them, and they've been leveraging a lot of the systems and technologies that we have to even grow faster. Some of the things that we've learned about hypercasual players that we really are excited about is that many of them are first-time players to mobiles. So being able to acquire players into our network through a game like High Heels or Blob Runner 3D, and then over time introducing them to other Zynga games, we think is a real opportunity. The second thing is that these players play a lot of games, and they don't just play hyper-casual titles. They're also playing, I'm talking about a different segment of players, they also play a lot of regular mobile games. So they're high consumers of titles. They tend to be younger players. than the typical target that we have at Zynga. And we like that kind of incremental growth there as well. And as you think about the user acquisition funnel, these are players that are being acquired for pennies that are not sensitive to IDFA and are able to be brought into our network. And if you think about the arbitrage and the long-term nature of the relationship that we're going to build with them, it's a very positive thing for our company overall. So when we've been looking at this category for many years, and a lot of folks thought that hypercasual was a fad early on, and I honestly think it's a new form of entertainment on the phones. They dominate the charts in terms of free-to-play games. They're instantly on. They're simple ideas. They're fun to play. They work off of advertising, so they're very accessible. Over time, I think they'll evolve into bigger games, maybe games like IAP. They'll expand internationally more so than they have. So we like the early indications here. We like the player profiles we're seeing. We like the behaviors. It's incremental. And I think when you start to think about our expansion of our advertising network, having this at the top of the funnel and being able to bring them through is a significant advantage for us versus, you know, not having a hyper-casual part of our portfolio.
spk13: Jarrett?
spk02: In terms of, we're very happy with the pacing, how Rollick is pacing. It obviously had a very good first quarter with the company. We don't give out specific individual title or portfolio growth rates, but how I can answer your question is we expect the overall shape of the 21 bookings to be 85% user pay and 15% advertising. And, you know, the majority of the advertising growth you're going to see year on year is going to come from Rollick. We do expect to see some growth from the rest of the portfolio, but the majority is going to come from Rollick. So that will give you a good indicator of its growth rate for the year. Great.
spk01: Thank you, Frank. Thank you, Jair.
spk02: Cheers.
spk07: Thank you. Our next question comes from Mike Hickey with Benchmark Company. You may proceed with your questions.
spk12: Hey, Frank, Chair, Rebecca, congrats, guys, on the quarter. Great job. Two questions from me. First one within your sort of social poker slots business. Curious how that's performing. And I know I'm zeroing in here. I apologize. But Michigan, as you know, Michigan just legalized Online gaming went live January or February. Just curious if you're seeing sort of any impact from the RMG operators in that state on your social portfolio. And I guess same question, if you guys have considered strategic alternatives to your slots and poker business. Seems like these are really compelling assets for the RMG operators in terms of user acquisition. Second question for me. If you will, curious your thoughts on Glue Mobile. I think Frank, you know, Nick and his team really well. Seems like they've built out a great culture, good portfolio of games, a lot of casual games, the same geo, cost synergies. So just curious why you wouldn't compete for that asset. Seems to make a lot of sense. Thanks, guys.
spk03: Hey, Mike, thanks for the questions and comments. The first question about social casino and poker, you know, this year in 2020, we've seen very positive performance from the games that we provide there, whether it's Game of Thrones or Hit It Rich. And in fact, our poker title has been coming on strong at late. So overall, that category has been performing very strong. We're not seeing any impact from the expansion of real money gambling in Michigan or in the other states. We typically find that the players of our social slots and social casino games enjoy the way that they play. They're not really necessarily in it for the making of the money or the real money part of it. The social nature of it, the fun gameplay, the engagement and the retention is really what's driving a lot of their behavior. So it's It's more traditional game behavior than what you might have seen from an online gambling site, for example. So we think that that is an enduring thing. If you look at where categories have had significant real money gaming in Europe, for example, and other regions, the social side of it, the free-to-play side of it, has continued to be vibrant and very successful. So I think they can coexist and are in some ways somewhat complementary. With regards to looking at strategic alternatives, you know, we're very pleased with the performance of Zynga Poker and Social Casino as part of our portfolio. We're very proud of the teams and the work that they do there. So that's not something that, you know, we're talking about in any great detail. As it relates to Glue, you know, congratulations to Nick and the team. They've done a fantastic job with Glue over the years. We're very happy for them in this transition to being a part of Electronic Arts. We wish them well. They've been great competitors and a big part of the industry. So it's sad to see them go, but at the same time, we're going to continue to keep competing with their franchises. As far as an asset goes, we look at all kinds of assets when we're thinking about building our business inorganically. It just so happens that the way that Zynga is configured and where we're going with our growth initiatives in advertising, hyper-casual, cross-platform play, The acquisitions that we had just executed with Rollick and Pete, you know, the combination of our two companies wasn't something that really was something that we chased. It was a lot of it was timing and where we were going strategically. So, again, wishing Nick and the gang well at Glue.
spk12: Thanks, guys. Good luck.
spk07: Thank you. Our next question comes from David Beckel with Berenberg Capital. Can we proceed with your questions?
spk11: Hey, thanks so much for the questions. I have two pertaining to the advertising side of the business. First, Jer or Frank, whoever wants to take it, I was hoping you could expand a little bit on a comment you made about why you don't expect IDFA to have a significant impact on your business, not presuming it should necessarily, but you did mention yield optimization strategies. Would you consider these workarounds to what Apple has in mind for implementation, or are they separate and apart sort of organic strategies that you've developed with your partners? If you could dive into that just a little bit. And then secondly, on the ad network side, I'm curious what portion of your total ad inventory do you envision being sold, I'll just use the term organically for lack of a better word, through your own network? And what type of savings do you envision on that portion of the inventory? Thanks.
spk02: David, in terms of the strategies I was referring to, I know IDFA is getting a lot of airtime both in the press and across the industry. But practically speaking, our industry always has puts and takes that we deal with. And from our vantage point, We just added this one to the puts and takes. We're continually working with our advertising partners to optimize yields, to find different offerings that we can embed within our games that are player-friendly, but also gives us new opportunities to deliver advertising bookings and revenue. From that point of view, definitely there's been a lot more discussions with our partners on how we can operate in a post-IDFA world. But I have to say it's been, for the most part, business as usual in terms of us looking to optimize and grow our business. So from that point of view, it's not like there was a separate set of specific initiatives. What I will say is having such a strong and diverse audience base that we do have from an advertising network point of view in terms of our games and our player bases is absolutely helping us to be a lot more resilient than if we were a single game or we were a part of the ecosystem that's purely focused on tracking and profiling. So from that point of view, we feel good that we're obviously a diverse portfolio of games. We've got a diverse audience base and we've got probably some of the best in class data science and analytics in this area. And so we're comfortable that we've got the strategies and the options to deal with IDFA and continue to grow the business. On the ad network side, we're not at a point where we will declare what percentage of our business will go through the network, but obviously our ambition is to have a significant part of our business go through our own network because obviously from our point of view, that makes a lot of sense given the size of our our own audience base and the capabilities we can build in to expand our position in the ecosystem. And it obviously will help us to increase our share of economics on the full value chain.
spk11: Great, thanks so much.
spk07: Thank you. Our next question comes from Matthew Thornton with Truist Securities. He may proceed with your question.
spk00: Hey, good afternoon, Frank. Good afternoon, Jer. most of mine have been answered, but maybe just a couple quick housekeeping questions and then one bigger picture one for Frank. Maybe, Jared, housekeeping-wise, the contribution from new titles in 21, I apologize if I missed this, but are you able to maybe just quantify or maybe box in a little further what that means? Is that less than 5% of bookings or any color you can provide there? Similarly, the long-term operating margin, I'm just curious kind of how you're thinking about that these days, whether that's 30%, 35%, or I don't see why there's a ceiling there, but any color there. And then, Frank, just M&A landscape more broadly. Obviously, you talked about the deal earlier this week a little bit. We've had a couple new SPACs come out, probably more to come. I'm just curious how you're feeling just about the opportunities out there. As we go into 21, do you still see – an attractive opportunity landscape out there. Any color there would be great. Thanks, guys.
spk02: This is Gerald. I'll answer the contribution. We've put a very small percentage in. It's low single digits as it relates to new games. Obviously, there's a potential for that to be larger depending on the timing of those games and how they scale, but as in past years, we We set up our guide for the year, focusing on what we can have a stronger level of prediction against, i.e. our live services, and obviously layering in some of the marketing that we're targeting against these new game launches. Matt, I didn't catch the second part of your two-parter for me.
spk00: I don't know if this is you or Frank, but just long-term operating margins, just how you're thinking about that target. You referred to kind of making progress towards that target. I'm just kind of curious how you're thinking about what that target is and whether that's changed at all, given the scaling graph.
spk02: Yeah, I think you used the operative word. It's all about scale, and it's about execution. If you think about last year, we came off a year in 2019 where we delivered 21%. We had some really strong quarters in 2020. We started with 21%, then two 26s and we ended with a 25 and we came close to delivering 25% for the full fiscal, which is actually is the next sort of target zip code for us is to get into that 25% operating range and then ultimately head towards 30. How do you do that? It is fundamentally scaling your live services, i.e. either through organic growth of the core base or continuing to bring profitable new games into that mix, and also expanding our advertising footprint, whether it be in hyper-casual or our core business, and expanding into some of the new areas that Frank mentioned, whether it's cross-platform, whether it's into expanding our addressable market internationally. They are all additional levers. But as you've seen, we've taken the company from somewhere around $700 million, 2% flow through up to north of $2 billion and 25% last year. And this year, we're showing some compression. We're still looking to deliver at least 23% this year. But in a year where we're launching, we plan to launch more new games. We plan to invest incrementally into some very exciting new areas and And if we execute against that, that obviously sets us up very nicely for 22 and beyond. So that's the game plan.
spk03: And, Matt, in terms of your question about the M&A environment, you know, it's obviously the growth that interactive entertainment saw in 2020 has really brought a lot of attention. The expansion in the capital markets is certainly one factor. When we think about Zynga's position in that overall context, we've been a successful consolidator over the last few years. and i think it's really comes down to the position the company has in many ways we we like to look for companies that uh are it can grow faster as part of zynga we like to find companies that have compatible cultures that are looking for autonomy that are interested in independence yet being part of a company where they can really leverage the tools of our live services platform we think that those opportunities are still out there there's still a lot of great developers that are small, young, growing. We think that there's going to be an opportunity for us to look further afield into capabilities related to cross-platform play in terms of advertising. And then also the hyper-casual category is a place, as it expands, there's a lot of interesting companies there as well. So we believe in competition. We welcome it. When companies go public, um we think it's great uh you know these are companies we typically competed against in the pro they were private we were public now everybody's public i think it's good for investors i think it's good for the companies in the category i think it legitimizes uh to a greater degree interactive entertainment and as more of these companies come public i think it's it's a dynamic that will really create more growth and innovation overall and i think within the m a space uh you're seeing a lot of activity but at the same time um we feel like we have a very strong organic growth strategy. And so that means we can be pretty selective about what we go after from an inorganic standpoint and make sure that we continue to do the right deals at the right time. We do not have fear of missing out. That is not a dynamic at our company. It's really a function of focusing on growth, execution, and if we find a great team with a great culture, we'll go for it.
spk07: Thank you. We have time for one more question. Eric Handler with MKM Partners. You may proceed with your question.
spk13: Thank you much for fitting me in here. Two questions for you. First, as you think about your key revenue drivers, at least on the mobile online game bookings line, do you see this year being driven more by the increase in players or DAUs or more by the spending per player? And I have a follow-up.
spk03: I'll take that question. It's actually a little bit of both. We are seeing an expansion in audience. Clearly you saw that in our numbers. A lot of those are players from hyper-casual. So they tend to be lower, you know, they monetize less. They're advertising-based and the games are shorter in nature. If you go to our games like Empires and Puzzles or Harry Potter or Words of Friends, which now has a boost economy tied to IAP, we're actually seeing very good increases in conversion and ARPDAU. So it's just when you look at our overall mix, we have a lot of games now like Hypercasual that brings down some of the averages. But overall, we're seeing growth in audience on Hypercasual, but at the same time, in some of our traditional games, retention engagement is very strong. And over the course of 2020, conversion and monetization did rise.
spk13: Okay. And then now that you sort of reloaded your dry powder for M&A, and you're also sort of investing in cross-platform opportunities, are we thinking maybe too myopically about just looking at companies in the mobile game space? Would you take a look at a company that's got maybe a good PC or console game and the ability to maybe take that to the mobile platform?
spk03: You know, I think we're an interactive entertainment company. We're mobile first, and we've built our business there. But as we look ahead, what we're trying to signal to investors is that some of the biggest opportunities out there are in cross-play style franchises. That's where you see a lot of billion-dollar franchises and they're driven by free-to-play dynamics and live services, which we think we have a competitive advantage in. So if we're able to find opportunities to partner with a development organization that might be on a different platform that we can combine with mobile, we think that that's a rich opportunity to investigate. I don't think you'd see us just doing a console game by itself or a PC game by itself. We're really more interested in PC console and mobile games you know, that are cross-play, that are seamless, that are asynchronous, and all working together in a free-to-play live services environment. That's where we see the big win.
spk13: Great. Thank you.
spk07: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.
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