Finance

The retailer announced a huge loss of £121.7 million in June, and despite offloading HMV Canada and bookshop chain Waterstone's its misery continues. Sales in the eighteen weeks to September 3 fell 21.8 per cent, but an increased focus on technology in selected stores saw their sales more than double. As such it is to roll out its new shop-floor strategy to the majority of its 150 stores before the end of the month.

Andriasang brings word from Nikkei that Sony's stock, which has been falling for the last three days, has now hit its lowest level of the year, which one investment manager pinned on yesterday's announcement that Dragon Quest X is headed to Wii and Wii U. Investors are a fickle bunch, and concern over the potential impact on Sony's game business should not be taken as a sign that the financial community is leaning back towards Nintendo. Square Enix's shares fell ten per cent day on day, presumably a result of the company putting all its eggs in the basket of a company whose share price has been in and out of the doldrums for the past few months.

The French mobile developer's financial results for the six months to June 30 showed profits of €5.3 million (£4.69 million), the same figure it reported this time last year. This comes despite an increase in sales revenue of 15.3 per cent, to €76.8 million (£68 million). Gameloft has chosen to pump an extra €5 million into R&D;, with administration costs also rising, but the firm says it is in a healthy financial position, claiming sales of smartphone and tablet games during the first six months of 2011 were up 55 per cent year on year.

In what is being described as an "unprecedented" move for a technology company, Zynga has changed the structure of its stock to give CEO Mark Pincus 70 times the voting power of those who buy its shares on the stock market. Each of Pincus' shares will be worth 70 votes, with current stockholders' shares worth 10 votes, and those that bought shares after Zynga filed for an IPO get just one vote per share. One observer said the move may have been designed to ensure that Zynga staff with stock options do not have the power to outvote Pincus, who founded the company in 2007 and, with a 16 per cent share, is its majority shareholder.

The localisation specialist is reviewing the future of its UK operation, Develop reports, with some 30 staff in the midst of a redundancy consultation as the firm moves the bulk of its operations to Canada. CEO Richard Leinfellner said: "Market demands have dictated our move. It is a market reality that we have to follow trends. There is a brain drain in the UK while Canada is thriving, and benefiting from tax breaks that can save local studios 30 to 40 per cent on production costs." Affected staff have been asked if they would be prepared to move to Canada, with senior management already making the move. Babel is expected to retain a UK presence, albeit in significantly smaller premises.

The company's share price rose by as much as ten per cent during the day's trading, ending the day up 8.1 per cent, at ¥13,100 per share. It appears that the cause for this much-needed recovery is not the rumoured 3DS redesign, but reports of a 3DS trade show in Tokyo on September 13, just days before the Tokyo Game Show kicks off, with investors speculating that the company is set to reveal new games for the troubled system.

Ville Heijari said recently that the Angry Birds developer would value itself "somewhere, I dunno, maybe north of PopCap," but the studio is considering a round of fundraising that would see it valued at $1.2 billion - just shy of the $1.35 billion EA will pay if PopCap meets its earnings targets. Bloomberg reports that interested parties include Disney, Electronic Arts, and Zynga.

The social gaming company has been busy snapping up studios worldwide, making 14 acquisitions in the past 12 months, but Inside Social Games reports that Zynga may now be eyeing much bigger targets. A revised IPO filing reveals that last month it set up a revolving credit agreement that enables it to borrow up to $1 billion, which given its cash balance - the IPO filing revealed it held cash and equivalents of $996 million - suggests that it is preparing for some large-scale acquisitions in the months to come. Among the rumoured targets are casual and RPG developer Storm8, and Rovio, developer of Angry Birds.

Disney’s game division posted an increased operating loss for its third fiscal quarter ended July 2, 2011, despite a jump in revenues. Operating results for the firm’s Interactive Media segment declined 32 per cent year-over-year to a loss of $86 million (£53.2m), while revenues for the quarter increased 27 per cent to $251 million (£155.3m). “Lower segment operating results were driven by the inclusion of Playdom, including the impact of acquisition accounting, partially offset by an improvement at our console game business,” Disney said. “The improvement at our console games business reflected higher unit sales and lower marketing costs. The increase in unit sales was driven by the performance of Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean and Cars 2 in the current quarter compared to Toy Story 3 and Split Second in the prior year. These increases were partially offset by higher cost of sales reflecting fees paid to the developer of Lego Pirates Of The Caribbean.” The news was brighter for the company as a whole, which saw quarterly profits up eleven per cent to $1.48 billion (£915.8m), and revenues up seven per cent to $10.7 billion (£6.6b).

iPhone maker Apple briefly leapfrogged oil and gas corporation Exxon Mobil to become the world’s most valuable company yesterday. The firm’s shares jumped as much as 6.1 per cent to $374.61 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, taking its market value to $347.3 billion, Bloomberg reports. Having switched places several times during the day, Exxon held the crown at the end of the trading session. Apple made a staggering $7.31 billion profit in the three months to June 25, on quarterly sales of $28.57 billion. Earlier this month the company said it has cash reserves of $76 billion.

The Japanese publisher's financial results for the three months ending June 30 show a fall in sales revenue of 24.6 per cent, to ¥24.5 billion (£188.7 million), but profits slumped 61.9 per cent year on year to just ¥690 million (£5.3 million). President Yoichi Wada said: "In a quarter without major title releases, profit and sales were lower compared to the previous year. We are focusing all our efforts on rebuilding the group businesses during the current fiscal year toward generating a substantial earnings recovery from the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013 and beyond."

The studio which proudly presents itself as a "hardcore social gaming company" has raised $18 million in a third round of funding, which will see Zynga co-founder Andrew Trader appointed to its board of directors. Prior to rebranding in April, Kixeye was known as The Casual Collective, and was founded by Paul Preece and David Scott, developers of Desktop Tower Defense. The company certainly seems to be going places: Inside Social Games notes that its workforce has grown from 3 to 60 employees in the last 18 months, and its number of monthly active users has grown 41 per cent, to 5.1 million, since the turn of the year.

The publisher's latest financial results show only a moderate increase in net revenue, rising 3.3 per cent year on year to ¥54.9 billion (£434.9 million). Net income, however, climbed 219.7 per cent to ¥4.04 billion (£32 million). Looking ahead, Konami is positive about the upcoming PlayStation Vita and Wii U, saying: "The types and number of devices on which games can be played are on the increase...Our belief is that we can increase the number of 'outlets' for Konami game content through the appearance of new devices. We will propose ways of playing games that match the characteristics of each device."