02 November 2012 Asia Pacific/Japan Equity Research Social Network Gaming Connections Series Impact of higher-spec social network games? ■ Issues and overview: With the implementation of self-regulation and current rollouts of games in existing genres now over, top-line growth in the domestic social network gaming market has slackened. Despite strong potential, it will likely be some time before overseas operations begin to make genuine profit contributions (the role of platforms remains unknown), so overseas markets do not offer much relief either, in our view. As the market shifts to native smartphone applications, the balance between increased costs and growth in user numbers in the domestic market will likely become a critical earnings variable for social network game developers. In this report, we look at earnings under different scenarios, as well as the The Credit Suisse Connections Series potential for business diversification to help stabilize earnings. leverages our exceptional breadth of ■ Conclusions: Game development costs are set to increase in response to: macro and micro research to deliver (1) higher royalty payments and (2) the ongoing shift to higher-spec games. incisive cross-sector and cross-border thematic insights for our clients. With no increase in the number of users, we estimate operating margins would fall to around 30% (from a peak of nearly 50% in Jan–Mar 2012), Research Analysts equating to about 15–20% downside for share prices. We believe P/Es Yuki Nakayasu remaining around 10x at current share prices would require: (1) migration of 81 3 4550 9966 console game users, and (2) gaining new users to boost the number of
[email protected] paying users by 1mn (from a little over 7mn currently).