G5 CEO interview

2011-02-07 08:48

Yesterday at 2236 I send a couple of questions to G5 Entertainment’s CEO Vlad Suglobov. This morning he had already answered my questions. After these answers I feel confterable that G5 will show increasing growth this year and today the company valuation is based on a pe-ratio of 13. Good luck everyone!

1.As you answered in an interview in "realtid", in December last year, G5 released one of the first mobile games on Verizon Wireless in USA when they just launched their paid games service. In just a couple of days on the 10th of February Verizon will unleash the Iphone in the US and expectations are enormous. Some analyst believe that Verizon will sell 9-15 Million Iphone only this year. So my question is if you ave any special strategic moves planned for this occasion since you historically, seem to have good relations with Verizon?

CEO: We expect that the release of iPhone on Verizon Wireless will increase the number of our customers in USA. We plan certain marketing efforts to take advantage of many new iPhone users. For Valentine's day 14th February — only one day — we are giving away Mushroom Age on iPhone and iPad, for free. Mushroom Age is a great Hidden Object game, and through this, we hope to attract many new players to this genre and our great game collection.

2. In the early December you where 70 people including contractors working at G5, how many are you today and do you feel that the process of hiring more people is going according to plan?

CEO: The process is going according to the plan. We were taking on more people recently to boost the production for 2011.

3. The Treasury Seeker series and the forthcoming game Romance of Rome are all originally developed for PC by Awem Studios. I am wondering how the business deals in these cases look between G5 and Awem and other pc-developers. Does Awem get some kind of provision of sales in App store and do you, G5, have the rights to bring the secuals for these games too, treasury seeker 3 and 4 and so on, to Iphone and Ipad?

CEO:Treasure Seekers series belongs to Big Fish Games, and is developed for them by a great development studio Artogon Games. The studio behind Romance of Rome — Awem Studios — is another company. They developed some very good casual games. We like to work with the best studios in the industry. Our deals with developers are structured so that G5 develops and publishes a game in the App Store and optionally other platforms, and the revenue is shared between G5 and developer, after G5 recoups its costs. We do not disclose the exact deal terms with developers, but don't underestimate the value we bring to the table in these deals. We usually reserve the right to work with the sequels as well.

4.Do you have any acquisition plans? CEO: No

5. Then I have an idea, maybe it is stupid and you might get your self a laugh but anyway: when apple releases ipad2 or iphone 5 this year is there a possibility that you get one of your games pre-installed on the device? Why not launch Virual City 2 when Ipad 2 launches and get a dollar per sold ipad,(that would be to good to be thrue) or have in app sales in the game?

CEO:I wish we could, but I don't think Apple would agree to pre-install any games.

6. I have read that you plan to get your games to googles platform android. Do you feel that this is the correct strategic path for G5? Do you have any concerns that this might be bad for your good relations with Apple?

CEO: Yes, I think it is good for G5 strategically. The devices got better and Android Market is much better experience now, so it's good time to enter. I don't think this can affect our relations with Apple — all major developers and publishers release their games on both platforms.

7. The last month G5 have presented two press releases about the sales. I find it a bit hard to understand the outcome of what will happen with the financial forecast for 2011 when you present it on the 25th of February. Is the plan to increase the forecast or not or is it hard to predict today?

CEO: We will need to wait until the report to find out. January was the best month ever for G5, we made more revenue and profit in this month than three months of Q1 2010. February just started, everything is going well, we have Romance of Rome coming out on iPhone and iPad, and we will have more information on Supermarket Mania 2 sales on PC before the report. As a rule, we provide the updated forecasts for the next quarter and the full year every 1.5 months — in interim reports, and at the end of each calendar quarter.