King, the British game developer and creator of Candy Crush Saga, filed for an initial public offering in the United States valued at more than $5 billion.
The game creator filed the SEC paperwork and will keep the IPO confidential, according to the Telegraph (U.K.) King will likely use the Nasdaq exchange.
King has been compared to Zynga, likely because both startups create games on social networks, although King probably would like to distance itself from the San Francisco-based company who once was valued at $9 billion and now has a market capitalization of $3.6 million. Zynga's stock went from $14.48 a share to in 2012 to $3.61 as of this writing.
According to the Telegraph, King has been profitable since 2005 and has made hundreds of millions of dollars this year already. Its most successful game, Candy Crush Saga, is played an average of 30 billion times a month.
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While tech stocks can be volatile, and Zynga's shares have been nothing short of a scary ride for investors, King is in a better position than Zynga ever was.
King has been profitable for eight years before filing for an IPO, so the company is somewhat stable. It does not rely only on Facebook for revenue, but also on app stores across multiple platforms. However, its flagship game, Candy Crush Saga, is unlikely to be matched in popularity again, so the possibility of King experiencing rapid growth is unlikely.
