Social casino game maker DoubleDown Interactive is planning an initial public offering on NASDAQ. The company is planning to raise up to $100 million from public market investors.

Popular game maker readies for the next time

The Seattle-based company is the maker of popular casual games like DoubleDown Fort Knox and DoubleDown Casino. According to 2019 statistics, the company brings 2.9 million players to its platform each month. According to its financial statements submitted with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earned $273.6 million in revenue last year with a net income of $36.3 million.

DoubleDown will be one of the biggest gaming company IPOs of the year after DraftKings which enlisted itself on Nasdaq which a special-purpose acquisition company. What makes DoubleDown unique is that it is already a profit-making company. Most other tech-oriented companies entering the public market are showing a deep loss in their books. DoubleDown has been turning a profit for the past two years, with its 2018 net income being $25.1 million.

The company benefitted enormously due to the lockdown as people couldn’t access land-based casinos and sports betting was also not a viable option. The surge in online gaming was also reported by The New York Times, which said that home-bound and isolated players are now boosting their spending on games. On Monday, Reuters reported that another mobile gaming company called Playtika, based in Israel is eyeing an IPO. The company recently hired Morgan Stanley to raise $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation.

DoubleDown’s history

The company has its US engineering center in the International District of Seattle. However, it has headquarters in Seoul, South Korea. It currently employs about 280 people of whom 149 are based in Seattle. The original company was founded in Seattle in 2010 and initially started with developing casino games on Facebook. It eventually ventured into mobile gambling. It has four popular games in its basket that have been installed over 100 million times. They include- DoubleDown Classic, DoubleDown Fort Knox, DoubleDown Casino, and Ellen’s Road to Riches.

The original company was led by Glenn Walcott, Greg Enell and Cooper DuBois who sold it to IGT for $500 million in 2012. Its Seoul business was started under the name The8Games Co., which was sold to DoubleU Games Co. in 2016. Interestingly, DoubleU Games acquired DoubleDown Interactive from IGT. The $825 million deal also included a multi-year partnership between the two companies.