Under-pressure Japanese gaming giant DeNA posts record annual revenues – $1.82B sales, $794M income

DeNA is one of a number of mobile gaming firms under pressure in Japan — where authorities look set to rule a lucrative social game genre illegal — but, casting that aside, the company has announced record annual revenues of $1.82 billion in sales and $794 million in operating income, up 29 and 13 percent year-on-year respectively.

The company’s most recent quarter was also a bumper one which saw net sales rise 32 percent to hit $529 million, while its operating income of $234 million was a 19 percent rise on the previous quarter.

Reflecting on the results, CEO Isao Moriyasu said:

DeNA has had an eventful and fruitful quarter and year. For our social games business, we invested heavily in foundation, talent, technology, partnerships and the market knowledge necessary to achieve our mission of building the world’s leading social gaming platform.  Steady growth in the last quarter confirms the value of these strategic investments and our core capabilities.

Moriyasu also looked forward to DeNA’s continued focus on worldwide markets, which saw it launch its first game in the US in March:

Now, with Mobage live across the world, we will continue to add the best-in-breed content to our portfolio, fine-tune our platform and cement our global leadership.

DeNA revealed that its Moba-coin — which could be subject to regulation from Japanese authorities — grossed $640 million over the last year, during which the firm linked up with Disney and expanded its efforts in China, South Korea and other markets.

Chief rival GREE announced its earnings yesterday, which were equally as impressive, as Japan-based industry expert Dr. Serkan Toto reports.

GREE saw net sales for the third quarter surpass $575 million (46 billion yen) and operating profit hit $307 million (24.5 billion yen). As the chart below shows, these statistics represented a significant increase on its figures one year ago, with sales alone up 11 percent on the previous quarter.

The duo’s main focus will be on possible action against ‘Kompu Gacha’ games, which wiped $3.8 billion worth of market capital from 12 leading firms listed in Japan on Monday alone.

TechCrunch Japan is reporting that DeNA will begin closing its offending titles one by one but still the threat of action from the government looms large.

Kompu gacha is a system that incentivises gamers to buy a range of virtual items based on the premise that they could win a ‘grand prize’, or rare item, for their efforts. It is being investigated by the government run Consumer Affairs Agency (CAA) as it may contravene laws that bar the use of lottery-style sales incentives.

The Japanese stock market has continued to react pessimistically to the issue, with GREE shares dropping 9.64 percent today and DeNA down 1.33 percent, Dr Toto notes.