Zynga Q4 and FY 2012: Paying users up, but losses all round

Zynga's first public quarterly financial report saw the casual publisher incur heavy losses, but an increased user base.

For the quarter ending December 31, Zynga reported revenue of $311 million, resulting in a loss of $435 million. Although revenues posted show a year-on-year increase of close to $1 million, losses were almost ten times that of the same period of 2010.

Over the whole year, Zynga drew revenues of $1,140 million, but again had an overall loss, of $404,316 million.

The casual gaming company did have some good news to share from the fourth quarter, gathering 300,000 new monthly unique payers, a 13% increase resulting in a total of 2.9 million. As analysts predicted, Zynga's losses suggest each one came at a high price.

Zynga also noted a a 13% increase in daily average users to 54 million, a 23% increase in monthly average users to 240 million, and a 38% increase in monthly unique users to 158 million.

The publisher claimed to hold the top five most-played games on Facebook, one of which is CastleVille, which managed to gather 7 million DAUs in two weeks, and three of the top ten grossing games on iOS.