Kim Kardashian Game Maker Glu Mobile Beats Analyst Expectations

San Francisco-based Glu Mobile, the studio behind free-to-play games Kim Kardashian: Hollywood and Dino Hunter: Deadly Shores, beat Wall Street’s expectations in its second fiscal quarter.

Analysts had been expecting a loss of four cents per share and $34 million in non-GAAP revenue, while Glu turned in a two cent loss and $35 million in revenue. The Kardashian game has been a top-10 app on the iPhone charts in both downloads and revenue for more than a month, and has inspired some hilarious commentary online.

Glu also announced that it would acquire Cie Games, the maker of the racing game franchise Racing Rivals, for $100 million, $30 million of which will be in cash. It’s the largest acquisition in the company’s history, CEO Niccolo de Masi said during a call with investors.

Last quarter, the company acquired Diner Dash maker Playfirst for $12 million, and it plans to release a new Diner Dash game later this year. CFO Eric Ludwig said Playfirst is now fully integrated into Glu, and he expects the Cie Games acquisition to follow a similar path after it closes on August 15.

Glu has raised its forecast for the rest of the year, and is now predicting it will make more in the next two quarters than it did in all of last year. In total, it now expects to gross between $222 million and $232 million this year, ahead of Wall Street’s current average estimate of $184 million.

Despite those forecasts, the expected cost of the acquisition drove Glu shares down in after-hours trading. At the time of this writing, they were down 7.7 percent, or 53 cents, since the closing bell.

source: Eric Johnson/Recode