Linekong Interactive Co. Ltd., a Chinese online game developer and distributor, has filed for IPO on HKEx Growth Enterprise Market. Founded in 2007 and starting with PC-based games, Linekong shifted focus to mobile games in 2013.
Update: Linekong launches IPO on December 30, 2014 to raise HKD720 million (about US$93mn).
Different from most mobile gaming businesses that start from casual games, Linekong began with mid-heavy games. Three such mobile games, Excalibur, Sword of Heaven and Blade of God, have been launched since March 2013, with the former two being developed in house.
Mobile gaming contributed 83.6% of its total revenues in the first quarter of 2014. In 2012, almost all the revenues were from PC-based games.
Apart from self-developed and licensed games, Linekong also offers advertising/marketing and other game-related services, such as OKSDK that is for third-party games to publish games on Linekong’s platform 8864.com, or integrate the user registration system or payments solution by Linekong. The company has partnered with some 200 Chinese channels, app stores, smartphone brands and telecom operators, to promote self-developed and licensed games.
Excalibur, launched in March 2013, contributed 46.4% of the company’s total revenues in 2013. It’s now available in more than 20 countries and regions.
Sword of Heaven, launched in Dec 2013 and now available in six countries or regions in Southeast Asia, generates up to RMB31.3 million (US$5mn) in monthly sales as of June 2014. Blade of God, a licensed game launched in March 2014, has had 11.4 million registered users in Greater China as of June 2014.
There are more than 80 million registered users on 8846.com, according to the company. As of July 31st, out of its 4.4 million monthly active users, 4 million, 91%, were on mobile. 80% of the 760,000 daily active users are on mobile.
Another six games are under development by Linekong and six licensed games will be released soon, as disclosed by the company.
Linekong has raised four rounds of funding that totals over US$100 million. The Series A round of US$2 million was from IDG Capital Partners, and the Series B of US$16 million was from Northern Light Venture Capital and NEA. In early this year Linekong raised US$80 in Series C. Very recently it received US$20 million from Chinese search giant Baidu at a valuation of US$400 million.
Linekong was founded by three co-founders, Wang Feng (CEO), Liao Mingxiang and Zhang Yuyu. Based in Beijing, China, the company has established subsidiary companies in Hong Kong and South Korea.