JAMDAT in the Fast Lane

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JAMDAT (Nasdaq: JMDT) is a five-year veteran in the young mobile-gaming market, and its earnings report, released yesterday, proved that the company is still a leader -- a big accomplishment given that gamers can be quite fickle.

JAMDAT's revenues shot up 122% to $11.6 million for the fourth quarter, up 22% from Q3. The company has now racked up 12 consecutive quarters of double-digit revenue growth. It also generated net income of $600,000, or $0.03 per diluted share, up from a loss of $1.8 million in the same period a year ago.

Expect the growth to continue. For the next quarter, JAMDAT forecasts revenues of $14.1 million, compared with $7 million in the previous year's period. Earnings per diluted share are expected to be $0.08. For fiscal 2005, the company forecasts $0.42 to $0.44 per diluted share on revenues of $60 million to $62 million.

To keep pushing the growth, JAMDAT has been busy striking deals. In early 2005, it will begin selling mobile games through RadioShack (NYSE: RSH). It's also focusing hard on content by securing licensing deals with gaming companies like Atari (Nasdaq: ATAR).

But the ideal situation is to own popular content. After all, JAMDAT's bowling games are still highly popular and profitable. To that end, JAMDAT recently purchased Downtown Wireless, which develops casino titles like Downtown Texas Hold 'Em, the No. 2 game on Verizon's (NYSE: VZ) "Get It Now" service.

While JAMDAT has done an admirable job maintaining its leadership and has $64 million in the bank, the company will need to continue to strike deals. That will get harder as megacompetitors like Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS) enter the mobile-gaming market, and as companies with bigger market caps, like InfoSpace (Nasdaq: INSP), continue to strike agreements at higher multiples.

Fool contributor Tom Taulli does not own shares of any companies mentioned in this article.