NetDragon drops after shift in listing venue
Shares in NetDragon Websoft, a mainland online game provider, fell 0.98 per cent yesterday, the first trading day after moving to the main board, as it announced plans to release three titles this year.
The stock, listed in the Growth Enterprise Market in November last year, shed 10 HK cents to close at HK$10.10 on its main board debut.
The Fujian-based company said one title it planned to launch this year was Heroes of Might and Magic Online, which it jointly developed with French game company Ubisoft.
'On average we will launch three to five new games each year,' said chief financial officer Joe Wu, adding that the company planned to invest HK$15 million to HK$20 million in each title.
NetDragon also plans to expand the game development team from 600 to between 800 and 1,000 staff by the end of this year and explore acquisitions in small developers to strengthen its offerings.
'We are talking to three to four mainland game development houses at the moment,' Mr Wu said.
The company also has teamed with Disney, the United States media conglomerate, to produce a new role-playing game based on a Disney fantasy tale. The new game, which has not been named, is expected next year.
'The current version is in Chinese. But we might develop other language versions in the future,' Mr Wu said.
The company is known to release its games in other languages, such as English, Spanish, French and Japanese, once the Chinese version is ready. More than 20 per cent of the company's sales came from overseas, he said.
Alicia Yap, an analyst at Citigroup, estimated that game companies would lose about 3 per cent to 4 per cent of second-quarter revenue because of the Sichuan earthquake.
