Cashed-up IGG readies more titles in mobile focus

I Got Games (IGG), a Singapore-headquartered mobile game operator, aims to roll out an additional 30 casual mobile games in the next 12 months as young people increasingly switch to playing on cellphones rather than desktop computers.

Founded in 2006, China-focused IGG raised HK$686 million through an initial public offering in the biggest capital raising on Hong Kong's Growth Enterprise Market board this year. Its shares started trading yesterday and closed up 10 per cent.

After recent market hype about online games, the firm priced its IPO shares at the upper to middle range of HK$2.80 each, selling 327.4 million shares - of which 262.7 million, or 80 per cent, were new.

The rest were old shares offered by a consortium of present and former employees, including IGG chairman Cai Zongjian and a fully owned subsidiary.

Chief operating offer Xu Yuan told a media briefing in Hong Kong yesterday that it planned to diversify its products and market position after transforming from a "hard-core" game maker into a "mid-core" operator.

Much of the recent appetite for online and mobile game stocks has primarily been driven by interest in app distribution platforms - a portal to mobile apps - with investors and online giants such as Alibaba seeing a future dominated by mobile devices such as cellphones and tablets at the expense of desktop computers.