DeNA Co., the Tokyo-based company whose service lets people play games on mobile phones, is seeking to expand its e-commerce and mobile entertainment businesses and is mulling acquisition opportunities.
The operator of the Mobage network has lost about 25 percent this year as mobile subscribers shift to smartphones from an earlier generation of handsets that relied on the game-maker's platform to download titles. DeNA is the fifth-worst performing stock on the Topix index this year, which has gained 39 percent over the period, boosted by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's fiscal and monetary stimulus.
As DeNA moves further into e-commerce, it will have to compete with online retailers such as Rakuten Inc. and Yahoo Japan Corp. DeNA had about $470 million in cash and near cash items in the quarter that ended in June.
"Gaming is a big pillar of our company but we won't be dependent on it," Chief Executive Officer Isao Moriyasu said Oct. 24 in Tokyo. "We are paying close attention to the entertainment content space."
The maker of "Blood Brothers" and "Ninja Royale" got 89 percent of its revenue from social media in the fiscal year that ended in March. E-commerce-related sales accounted for about 7 percent.
The company has a "strong" pipeline of native apps in the second half of this year, Jefferies LLC analyst Atul Goyal said.