Zynga’s social casino franchise rescues Q2 numbers but user exodus continues

Zynga’s social casino products helped beat analysts’ forecasts in Q2 but the company continues to hemorrhage users.

Revenue in the three months ending June 30 rose 30% to $199.9m and Zynga even narrowed its net loss to a mere $26.9m, down from $62.5m in the same period last year. Advertising and other revenue hit $38m, up 7% sequentially and a hefty 70% year-on-year.

Bookings, the sale of virtual goods within games, were roughly flat year-on-year at $174.5m, but this was far better than the $157m analysts had forecast. Even better, mobile bookings rose 30% to $115m, now representing two-thirds of all bookings. However, web bookings fell 31% year-on-year to $59m.

Average daily bookings per daily average user rose 29% to 9.1¢, but average monthly unique payers dropped over 28% to 1m and player conversion fell 17% to 1.6%. (Compare that to current industry leader Caesars Interactive Entertainment, which recently boasted a 4.4% conversion rate and earned 31¢ from each user.)