How's Zynga Doing? Here Are the Key Takeaways From New Earnings Report

Social gaming company Zynga today reported earnings for the quarter ended March 31, giving industry-watchers some insight into the company's health. For the three-month period, Zynga pulled in $187 million in overall revenue, an increase of 2 percent compared to the same period last year. Revenue from online games, rose quarter-over-over, but fell by 7 percent when looking at the same quarter last year.

In terms of profit, Zynga didn't make one. It posted a loss of $27 million, which was better than the $46 million loss it recorded during the same period last year. This improvement was attributed in part to lower costs and expenses overall, including things like, in order of significance, "restructuring expense, the elimination of duplicative data center costs and marketing costs."

A slide released as part of Zynga's earnings report today (below) shows that the company's slots business is its biggest-earner, followed by FarmVille and "other."

Zynga also reported that the number of daily active users and monthly active users for its games fell year-over-year. Zynga had 19 million daily active users during its latest quarter, an improvement from the previous quarter, but a dropoff from the 25 million daily active users it had during the same quarter last year. Monthly active users, meanwhile, came in at 68 million for the latest quarter, a major decrease from the 100 million the company reported for the same quarter last year. Check out the chart below to learn more.

Zynga is not expecting to get back in black next quarter. Here is the company's revenue and profit projections for the next three months:

• Revenue is projected to be in the range of $170 million to $180 million
• Net loss is projected to be in the range of ($26) million to ($20) million

For the quarter, Zynga had $857 million in cash, equivalents, and securities.

Former Electronic Arts executive Frank Gibeau is now the CEO of Zynga, taking on that role earlier this year. He said in a statement that the past two months have been "productive" and that he is hopeful for the future.

"Zynga has all the ingredients it needs for a successful turnaround," he said. "My priority is to bring our founding social gaming vision to life in our games and lead our teams to deliver high quality experiences for players on time and profitably.

"Since joining, the biggest surprise for me has been how much operating leverage we have across the company, which we can unlock with improved planning, more focused execution and cost control.," he added. "That means putting in place more disciplined, consistent development practices and more cross-team collaboration. Over the long term, there's no reason why Zynga's margins can't be more in line with its peers. We're committed to improving our operating leverage and cost management to attain those levels. Longer term, we're building a world class studio and innovative creative culture. In my experience, the best games in the world are made by small, complete teams with great chemistry who build games in a predictable and profitable way."

Zynga will hold a call at 2 PM PST / 5 PM EST today to discuss these results and answer questions. Check back later for more.