Zynga (ZNGA) Q3 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Zynga (ZNGA)
Q3 2020 Earnings Call
Nov 04, 2020, 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Zynga third-quarter 2020 results conference call. [Operator instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. [Operator instructions] I would now like to hand the conference to your speaker today, Rebecca Lau, VP of investor relations and corporate finance. Please go ahead, ma'am.

Rebecca Lau -- Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance

Thank you, Joelle, and welcome to Zynga's third-quarter 2020 earnings call. On the call with me today are Frank Gibeau, our chief executive officer; and Ger Griffin, our chief financial officer. Shortly, we will open up the call for live questions. Before we cover the safe harbor, please note that in an effort to keep our team members healthy, each member on today's call is dialed in remotely.

We appreciate your understanding during the call and hope everyone is staying safe during this time. During the course of today's call, we will make forward-looking statements related to our business plan and strategy, as well as expectations for our future performance. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted. Please review the risk factors in our most recently filed Form 10-Q, as well as elsewhere in our SEC filings, for further clarification.

In addition, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures. Our earnings letter, earnings slides, and, when filed, our 10-Q will include reconciliations of our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Please be sure to look at these reconciliations as the non-GAAP measures are not intended to be a substitute for or superior to our GAAP results. This conference call is being webcasted and will be available for audio replay on our Investor Relations website in a few hours.

Now, I'll turn the call over to Frank for his opening remarks.

Frank Gibeau -- Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Rebecca. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our earnings call. We continue to live in unprecedented times as the human cost of the COVID-19 pandemic weighs on so many different aspects of our lives. Over the past several months, we have been humbled to see more people turn to our deeply total game experiences for entertainment and a sense of community.

We are also proud of our teams as they continue to work from home effectively and deliver exciting new content to our players, including the successful launch of Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells. In Q3, we delivered strong results ahead of our guidance across all key financial measures, including our highest ever quarterly revenue and bookings with revenue of $503 million, up 46% year over year, and bookings of $628 million, up 59% year over year. We also delivered our best Q3 operating cash flow of $113 million, up 65% year over year. Today, we are raising our full-year 2020 guidance, which Ger will tell you more about later on the call.

Execution of our multiyear growth strategy has driven our tremendous results to date and generated positive momentum across our business. The foundation of our multiyear growth strategy is our life services. By delivering a steady cadence of innovative bold beats, we are able to drive recurring growth across our highly diversified portfolio of forever franchises, as well as our social slot and casual cards titles. Specifically, in Q3, our Social Slots portfolio marked its best revenue and bookings quarter in Zynga history, led by breakout performances by Hit It Rich! Slots and Game of Thrones Slots Casino.

We also saw record Q3 performances from Words With Friends, CSR2, our Casual Cards portfolio, and Empires & Puzzles. These outstanding results are a great example of the enduring nature of our forever franchises at Zynga. In July, we successfully integrated Peak, and our teams are working extremely well together. Toon Blast and Toy Blast were strong contributors in their first full quarter at Zynga and key drivers of our year-over-year top-line growth.

We also have an exciting pipeline of new games that have the potential to become new forever franchises and will add to our growth in the coming years. At the end of Q3, we launched Harry Potter Puzzles & Spells worldwide, which is off to a great start, with positive player feedback, as well as 4.8 average star ratings on both the Apple App Store and Google Play. Building upon its positive launch momentum, we expect to steadily scale Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells over the coming quarters at a meaningful growth driver for Zynga in 2021 and beyond. FarmVille 3 and Small Giant Games, Puzzle Combat, are also progressing well in soft launch as both these titles rigorously test new feature sets designed to deliver long-term engagement and monetization.

Over the coming years, we plan to release additional titles, including a new CityVille, two games set in the Star Wars Universe, as well as new projects from our Gram Games and Peak Studios. The global proliferation of high-end smart devices is shifting the entertainment landscape toward mobile games. Players across genders, geographies, and generations are drawn by the ever-increasing opportunities to socialize with friends and make new connections anytime and anywhere. As the industry continues to expand and evolve, we are investing in new markets, categories, and technologies that will have the ability to increase Zynga's total addressable market and further accelerate our growth over the long term.

Specifically, in Q3, we grew our international revenue and bookings by 44% and 49% year over year, respectively. In Asia, the addition of Toon Blast and our investments in Empires & Puzzles drove user-pay revenue and bookings up 70% and 88% year over year, respectively. For Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells, we are partnering with Line, a leading social network in Japan to promote the title and connect players in the game. On October 1, we closed our acquisition of Istanbul-based Rollic, bringing an incredibly talented team and community of external developers to Zynga.

Rollic's popular portfolio of hyper-casual games and robust prototyping approach to new game development will be strong growth drivers as we continue to scale in one of the largest and fastest-growing game categories on mobile, while its large and diversified audience base will be valuable to Zynga as the mobile games industry and advertising landscape continues to evolve and grow. Over the next few years, we also see the potential to build out Zynga's player network, which will unlock more cross-promotion opportunities, as well as new advertising capabilities. As we look ahead, we continue to see more opportunities to acquire talented teams and franchises to further accelerate our growth. To date, our acquisitions have delivered strong contributions to our live services, added multiple new forever franchises to our portfolio, expanded our new game pipeline, and provided entry into new categories on mobile.

Our proven integration model enables teams to maintain their unique development cultures while leveraging Zynga's highly scalable studio operations, publishing platform, and advertising network, so we can grow faster together. In conclusion, we are executing well on our multiyear growth strategy as we continue to scale our business and progress toward our long-term margin goals. We are uniquely positioned as a mobile-first, free-to-play live services game company on the largest and fastest-growing gaming platform. Building upon our strong performance to date, we expect our highly diversified live services portfolio and exciting new game pipeline to be meaningful growth drivers in the years ahead.

To further accelerate our growth, we are also investing in initiatives that have the ability to expand Zynga's total addressable market and continue to see more opportunities for M&A. All of these factors combined have us positioned to be an interactive entertainment growth leader in 2021 and beyond and gives us confidence in our ability to generate more shareholder value. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Ger to discuss our Q3 results in further detail, as well as our outlook for 2020 and beyond.

Ger Griffin -- Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Frank. We delivered strong Q3 results, driven by our live services and ahead of our guidance across all key financial measures. We achieved our highest quarterly revenue and bookings, as well as our best Q3 operating cash flow. We are also very happy to welcome the Rollic team who joined on October 1, marking our entry into hyper-casual games in a meaningful way.

Given the full-quarter contribution from Rollic and continued strength in our live services, we are raising our full-year 2020 outlook. But first, let's discuss our Q3 results. Revenue was $503 million, comprised of bookings of $628 million, offset by a net increase in deferred revenue of $125 million. Revenue was $58 million ahead of our guidance, driven by an $8 million bookings beat and a $50 million more than expected net increase in deferred revenue.

Broad-based strength across our live services drove our top-line beat, in particular, stronger-than-expected performances from Words With Friends, our Social Slots portfolio, and CSR2. Revenue was up $158 million or 46% year over year, driven by bookings growth of $233 million or 59% year over year, offset by a $75 million higher net increase in deferred revenue. Our year-over-year top-line growth was primarily driven by full-quarter contributions from Toon Blast and Toy Blast, alongside growth in Empires & Puzzles, Merge Magic!, and our Social Slots portfolio. User pay was the primary driver of our top-line growth with advertising also up year over year.

The net increase in deferred revenue of $125 million was primarily due to the deferral of initial bookings on Toon Blast to Toy Blast in their first quarter at Zynga. The lower-than-expected increase in deferred revenue was primarily due to a conservative estimate in our guidance related to the revenue recognition on Toon Blast and Toy Blast, in addition to variances in actual bookings mix across the Zynga portfolio. Turning to Q3 operating expenses. GAAP operating expenses were $389 million, up $104 million or 36% year over year, primarily driven by the first full quarter of Peak and to a lesser extent, higher stock-based compensation, contingent consideration, and acquisition-related expenses year over year.

We incurred $67 million of contingent consideration expense in the quarter, which was up $6 million year over year and $42 million higher than our guidance, driven by our acquisitions continuing to perform ahead of our expectations and the true-up of the final year Gram earn-out. As part of a broader strategic review for Gram, including updated long-term incentive plans, we agreed with the prior Gram shareholders to set the final-year earn-out at approximately $75 million, allowing us to remove the earn-out operating covenants and fully integrate the operations of the studio in Q4 2020. The actual payment of the final-year earn-out will remain in July 2021. Non-GAAP operating expenses were $275 million, up $76 million or 37% year over year, primarily driven by a first full quarter of Peak and, to a lesser extent, the increase in marketing investments across the rest of our live services.

GAAP operating expenses decreased to $77 million -- excuse me, to 77% of revenue from 83% in the prior year, primarily due to a stronger operating leverage from R&D, partially offset by higher marketing investments year over year. Non-GAAP operating expenses represented 44% of bookings, down 52% in the prior year, driven by improved operating leverage across all operating expense lines. We reported a net loss of $122 million, $38 million better than our guidance, and compares to net income of $230 million a year ago, which included a $314 million gain on the sale of our San Francisco building. The variance to guidance was primarily driven by lower-than-expected net increase in deferred revenue and stronger operating performance, partially offset by higher contingent consideration expense.

The variance to prior year, excluding the one-time gain on the sale of the San Francisco building, was primarily due to a higher net increase in deferred revenue, amortization of acquired intangibles, and stock-based compensation, partially offset by our improved operating performance. Our adjusted EBITDA was $38 million, $83 million better than our guidance primarily due to the lower net increase in deferred revenue and the improved operating performance. On a year-over-year basis, adjusted EBITDA increased $10 million on stronger operating performance, partially offset by the higher net increase in deferred revenue. We generated our best Q3 operating cash flow at $113 million, up 65% year over year.

As of September 30, before we closed our acquisition of Rollic, we had approximately $758 million of cash and investments. While we expect to end 2020 with a strong cash position, supported by positive operating cash flow, we are assessing debt financing options to further expand our cash reserves, including for use in future acquisitions. Turning to guidance. We have developed our Q4 and full-year 2020 guidance based on the information available to us today, November 4, 2020, and using similar methodologies to prior years -- excuse me, prior quarters.

Given the higher level of volatility and uncertainty in the industry, in particular around the COVID-19 crisis, there is the potential for a wider range of outcomes, both positive and negative as it relates to our ultimate business results. For example, in Q3, while we have seen audience levels return from shelter-in-place highs in Q2, we continue to see strong payer engagement and monetization from existing and new cohorts. Looking ahead, while we expect to see some level of continued normalization, this may be influenced by many factors related to the ongoing pandemic. That said, let's now discuss our Q4 and 2020 guidance.

Guidance for Q4 is as follows: revenue of $570 million, up $166 million or 41% year over year; a net decrease in deferred revenue of $100 million versus $29 million in the prior year; bookings of $670 million, up $237 million or 55% year over year; a net loss of $92 million versus $4 million in the prior year; adjusted EBITDA of $35 million versus $75 million in the prior year. Some factors to consider in assessing our Q4 guidance include live services will drive the vast majority of our top-line growth, including full quarter contributions from Toon Blast, Toy Blast, as well as a full quarter contribution from Rollic hyper-casual games portfolio. We also will have initial contributions from our recently launched Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells, which we expect to scale steadily in Q4 and into 2021. This momentum will be partially offset by declines in older mobile and web titles.

Our top-line guidance does not assume the launch of any additional titles in Q4. We expect gross margins to be slightly down year over year due to the higher net increase in deferred revenue, amortization of acquired intangibles, and user-pay mix. We expect GAAP operating expenses as a percentage of revenue to increase year over year, primarily driven by the significantly higher net increase in deferred revenue and an increase in stock-based compensation, partially offset by lower contingent consideration expense. Outside of these factors, we expect year-over-year operating leverage improvements in R&D and G&A to be more than offset by higher marketing across our live service portfolio, including full quarter investments in Toon Blast, Toy Blast, and Rollic's hyper-casual games portfolio.

Additionally, building on Harry Potter: Puzzles & Spells successful launch momentum, we plan to invest meaningful marketing dollars to steadily scale title in Q4 and into 2021. We expect the key drivers of the year-over-year change in our net loss will be the significantly higher net increase in deferred revenue, as well as increases in amortization of acquired intangibles and stock-based compensation, partially offset by our improved operating performance, lower contingent consideration expense, and a benefit from income taxes. The year-over-year decrease in adjusted EBITDA is a function of the $71 million growth in net increase in deferred revenue, partially offset by our improved operating performance. Turning to 2020, our raised guidance is as follows: revenue of $1.93 billion, up $607 million or 46% year over year and up $129 million versus our prior guidance; an increase in deferred revenue of $312 million up $70 million or 29% year over year and down $88 million versus our prior guidance; bookings of $2.24 billion, up $677 million or 43% year over year and up $41 million versus our prior guidance; a net loss of $468 million versus net income of $42 million in 2019; and $82 million improvement on our prior guidance of $550 million of net loss.

Adjusted EBITDA of $211 million, up $124 million or 142% year over year and up $126 million versus our prior guidance. The primary drivers of our increased outlook are the full-quarter contribution from Rollic, as well as continued strength in our live services portfolio. For 2020, we expect our best annual revenue and bookings in Zynga history. We are also on track to deliver strong year-over-year operating leverage, demonstrating meaningful progress toward our long-term margin goals.

Our strong execution in 2020 should position Zynga for continued growth in '21, where we continue to expect double-digit top-line growth, as well as the potential for further margin expansion and positive operating cash flow. In summary, while we are operating in unprecedented times, we remain focused on entertaining and connecting our players to our games. Our business fundamentals are strong as we continue to execute our multiyear growth strategy. With that, we will now open the call for your questions.

Questions & Answers:

Operator

Thank you. [Operator instructions] Our first question comes from Alex Giaimo with Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Alex Giaimo -- Jefferies -- Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe two, one for Frank and one for Ger. Frank, obviously, another strong top-line beat and raise, but it does seem as if the magnitude of the beat was a bit lighter than what we saw in the first half of the year.

So just curious if you're starting to see trends normalize back toward those pre-COVID levels that you touched on in your opening remarks? Or just anything you can say broadly about engagement? And then, Ger, heard in your opening remarks that you said no new games or in the 4Q guidance. Should we interpret that as a new game won't launch? Or is it just safer to not include in the guide and then see what happens? Thank you, guys.

Frank Gibeau -- Chief Executive Officer

Hey, Alex. Yes, I'll start with the discussion on the beat. We had a strong quarter. We were up, what was it? 55%, 59% year over year in bookings.

And it was a choppy quarter just in terms of how it was going to unfold. With COVID causing a big audience increase in the late spring, early summer, how that was going to pattern out has been kind of a big topic of the company. What we are seeing in the data is that we are seeing engagement and monetization and retention trends, as well as conversion really stay elevated. While we've seen a return of kind of the top-line DAU growth to kind of more normal growth, those other factors remain elevated, which I think points to the fact why the beat on the bottom was so much larger.

We saw a lot of leverage in the business because people were playing longer, they were monetizing at higher rates, converting. And as we scale the business, looking at the overall ad market, we saw real opportunities to continue to drive the business organically without having to spend UA. And then that's why you see our kind of our second consecutive quarter of EBITDA percentages on a non-GAAP basis be 25%, 26%. So while that beat on the top, I think we beat our guidance.

And as we look forward into Q4, $670 million is going to be up 55% year over year. And it's really predicated on a couple of key things. We've got continued strength in live services that we're forecasting forward. We've got the momentum from Harry Potter that has started very strong at the end of Q3.

It didn't contribute anything really in the quarter, but going into Q4, you're going to really start to see that play a role. And then as we integrated Peak and Rollic, we're going to start to see some interesting dynamics as we head into the fall. I'll start a little bit on kind of the philosophy around the second question on new game stuff and then hand off to Ger for the guidance. One of the things that we have at Zynga is the strong foundation of live services, which gives us a lot of flexibility on how we develop and bring new games to market.

It's a real luxury, frankly, to be able to take your time and test the games to their maximum quality and to really deliver on long-term engagement. Mobile is a very competitive category. There's a lot of competition there. But as I think you see with the Harry Potter launch, with the strong start that we're seeing there, the time that we spent in test market going through engagement, retention, monetization, as well as quality was time well spent.

And we continue to hold that philosophy as we look at Farmville 3, Puzzle Combat, the future pipeline of Star Wars, Cityville, more games from Gram and Peak. When we launch a game, we want it to be a hit, and we want to be able to add it to the portfolio and to be a contributor for multiple years going forward. So that's the management philosophy behind how we're introducing new games. But now, I'll hand off to Ger.

He can give you more detail.

Ger Griffin -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Frank. Yeah. Basically, I think you nailed it. When you look at the guide for Q4, we're seeing some really strong momentum with the launch of Harry Potter, and we're definitely doubling down the marketing we had implied in our guide when we set our guidance back in Q2 against this title.

So if you think back -- if you sort of looked at the implied guidance that we set back on the Q2 call, we were talking somewhere in the ZIP code bookings of $662 million and 20% flow-through, which obviously implies some deleverage because we're going to launch games or a game. What our guidance assumes now is that the focus is on Harry Potter. And we're definitely investing against that title, which is why you see deleverage from 26% in Q3, down to just over 20% in Q4 because, as you guys know, as you launch a game, the engagement metrics will obviously trend ahead of the monetization and the pinch points. And obviously, we'll be investing marketing into that where we see momentum and which is the case of Harry Potter, and so we're doubling down there.

In addition to -- obviously, we're coming into the holiday season. So there is a little bit more against the live services as well. But the primary driver when you look at the guidance from an EBITDA perspective is Harry. And that's the basic assumption around the guidance as we fine-tune that coming into the end of the year.

Alex Giaimo -- Jefferies -- Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mario Lu with Barclays. Your line is now open.

Mario Lu -- Barclays -- Analyst

Great. I have a couple of questions, one on Harry Potter and one on IDFA. So the first one on Harry Potter, just wondering if you could provide some background on how that title, the partnership with Line in Japan came about. I know you have a couple of titles within Snapchat, but do you think similar opportunities exist with your further franchises within similar social media apps here in the West?

Frank Gibeau -- Chief Executive Officer

Yes. I'll take the Harry part question and then we can jump to your IDFA. When we looked at our go-to-market strategy for Asia, as you know, last year, we launched Empires & Puzzles into Asia directly without partners. And so for each title, we look at what opportunities there are to maximize success.

And the Harry Potter brand is particularly strong in Japan. And when we approached Line about a potential partnership, there was a lot of great collaboration and ideas for how we can integrate some of the assets of Harry Potter into their social network that could drive, promote additional installs and DAU and connect players within the game. What you find when you play Harry Potters, it's quite a social Match-3 game. There's a lot of guilds and competitions.

And so tapping into the social network that Line has really enabled us to launch with a lot of momentum in Japan. As we look at other game launches in the future, like Farmville, Star Wars titles, we'll take a country-by-country look at what types of partnerships are available to us or whether going direct makes the most sense. And it's just if you compare and contrast Empires & Puzzles, one was completely direct without a partner. And then with Harry Potter, the brand affinity and the collaboration possibility on social was something we jumped on.

We have launched games on Snapchat as kind of an experiment to see if we could launch bespoke games that are fully operation inside of the social network. That's something that we remain interested in and believe is a potential opportunity for the company longer term.

Mario Lu -- Barclays -- Analyst

Great. Thanks. And then one on the IDFA. So I'm just hoping you can help bring sense the potential impact from the change next year.

Advertising revenue is still growing pretty strong with 13% growth this quarter. But anything you can share in terms of the percentage of advertising revenue coming from iOS versus an Android? And then maybe on the user acquisition side for in-game bookings within a given period, is there like an average percentage coming from existing users versus new users that may be impacted by IDFA?

Frank Gibeau -- Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. It's going to be a shift in the mobile ecosystem that a lot of the companies are really starting to understand and build new systems and approaches to customer acquisition and how they potentially might run their ad networks. And as we've looked at it, we have some particularly unique assets at Zynga that, I think, will enable us to really manage through the IDFA introduction and be in really good shape long term. The first is with regards to the franchises that we have, is they're very long-lived, right? Words With Friends is 12 years old.

CSR is coming up on eight years. You've got games like Zynga Poker and others where the organic strength of the brands and also the awareness and interest that you have with brands like Harry Potter and Farmville and Star Wars, there's a lot of latent demand out there. There's a lot of organic demand out there that you can really go after in a non-IDFA way. In addition to that, we have a unique asset in Rollic.

Rollic is a very high network of games that we acquire players not using IDFA at very low rates of acquisition costs. That can be then moved into our network and potentially shown other games from the Zynga portfolio. And if we're able to convert any of those players into a player of another game, it's extremely leveraged for us. So we also, though, think about with regards the amount of information that we gather about our players inside game events.

When they come into Words With Friends, who are they talking to, what are they playing so that we can serve them better, that's information that allows us to have better-targeted ads we can do a lot of inference and probabilistic targeting that allows us to continue to talk to advertisers about the demographics that we're continually reaching and how that translates into our network. So there's probably a dozen things that we can do in our go-to-market platforms and in our acquisition platforms, that will allow us to continue to maintain effectiveness without really degrading our capability by the loss of that attribution. In terms of the iOS, Android split and advertising, it's mainly iOS, about 60% iOS, 40% Android is one way to think about it. And in terms of working with Apple on what they're standing up in terms of their new attribution model and ad market, that's something that we're learning a lot about and believe that we can also use to acquire players.

So I think for some companies, it's going to be painful. I think for our company, we've got a really good strategy in place to be able to kind of move through it. And from our perspective, privacy is really important for our players. And when new regulations or requirements come out like IDFA -- I'm sorry, like GDPR or the California rules, we adapt our services and are able to still deliver great gameplay on great services and still acquire players in a way that makes sense for the continued growth of Zynga.

Mario Lu -- Barclays -- Analyst

That's very helpful. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Colin Sebastian with Baird. Your line is now open.

Colin Sebastian -- Baird -- Analyst

Great. Thanks for taking the questions. In the letter, you talked again about the potential for more acquisitions. So just wanted to clarify that for now, is it safe to assume you're still taking a breather between deals as you integrate Peak and Rollic and, I guess, still a bit of Gram? And then on player engagements, the sequential increase from Q2 to Q3, is that all related to the integration of the acquired users? Or is there also some engagement improvement to on the existing portfolio?

Frank Gibeau -- Chief Executive Officer

Colin, the integrations for Peak was completed in Q3, and with the closure of the deal on Rollic on October 1, integration is well under way with Rollic. As we look out into the future, our M&A performance over the last few years has worked out good. We like the studios that joined us. The talent is fantastic, the franchises have been really additive to the portfolio, but we are very selective about the deals that we pursue and the company that interest us.

And from our perspective right now, we're focused on delivering a great launch with Harry Potter and scaling into Christmas, looking at the live services portfolio, growing that and continuing the integration of Peak, Rollic, and also looking at the Gram stuff that Ger talked about. So you never say never, but as we think about the fall, we're in pretty good shape. But as we look to '21 and beyond, we want to be in position for being able to partner with companies globally that could add to the growth. And I think that's a really important strategy for us long term, and we will continue to pursue that.

In terms of the elevated engagement, that's not just from the acquired studio. That's actually from the existing franchises. If you look at two games, in particular, CSR2 and Words With Friends, they had record Q3s. The Social Slots Casino, those games are five, six, seven years old, they're doing terrific.

And that's because we're seeing people as they went into shelter-in-place as they come out, they're playing mobile games longer. They're playing more mobile games, and they're retaining in a very positive way. And they're seeing the value of playing and socializing, so they're monetizing. So it's not just an addition from Peak.

It's actually portfoliowide.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Matthew Thornton with Truist Securities. Your line is now open.

Matthew Thornton -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

Hey good afternoon, Frank, and everyone. A couple if I could. A follow-up on IDFA. Just curious, over the past three months, obviously, the industry has kind of had a little more time to get its arms around the changes.

I'm curious if you've seen a change in maybe the M&A opportunity as you think out over the next couple of years because of IDFA. Or said differently, do you feel like there's more, perhaps maybe subscale players that want to come to the table and have conversations? Just curious if any change there. So that's question number one. And then just secondly, maybe for Ger, you talked a little bit about the visibility in 4Q versus the last quarter.

I know this is really hard. But when you think about how much COVID shelter-in-home lift is still kind of in the industry, do you feel like exiting 3Q, we're kind of back to a normalized run rate? Or are you still not willing to kind of make that call yet? Any color would be helpful as well. Thanks again, guys.

Frank Gibeau -- Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So starting with the IDFA question and the impact on the overall industry. Yes, scale is going to really matter in terms of a post-IDFA world, really having a large audience, having a lot of MAU, having a lot of relationships, and information inside your network is going to be critical. And if you're a subscale player, it's going to be very difficult to make some of these UA decisions.

And the lack of efficiency for subscale companies is going to be more painful. And so from my perspective, we think that from a trend line standpoint, those types of opportunities are going to be more plentiful as you move into '21 and beyond. At the same time, we're very, very excited about services and games that have high audience counts and bringing them into the Zynga network. So I think on both sides of it, there's going to be new opportunities versus where we were as an industry over the last couple of years.

Ger?

Ger Griffin -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. In terms of COVID, look, Matt, you're right in the sense that if you think about Europe right now, my mother country, Ireland is going through a big be lockdown, the Brits are following suit. So there is a lot of volatility in terms of what's going on in the world in terms of shelter-in-place. But as it relates to the quarter, our base assumption was we're going to see some level of normalization continue.

But again, it's too early to say. One of the reasons we characterized at the start of the guidance that there's a lot of puts and takes. In a world where we're back in a full lockdown, it's intuitive that there would be more engagement against games, but TBD. So there is something there, but it's not really something that we built into the forecast.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Eric Sheridan with UBS. Your line is now open.

Eric Sheridan -- UBS -- Analyst

Maybe coming back to the user acquisition and monetization question that's been asked a couple of times. Are there key investments you guys are trying to make either in your data science teams? Either internally or looking with partners externally to sort of do a fuller look at like what the opportunity might be on user acquisition to maximize for ROI and/or prepare for IDFA? And the same question, not away from user acquisition but also within in-game monetization, how should we think about positioning the product and making investments broadly in data science? Thanks.

Frank Gibeau -- Chief Executive Officer

Eric, the answer is yes, we are making investments in data science, as well as product management, to really diagnose and look at where the opportunities are and what the new ecosystem is going to look like, where attribution is going to shift in terms of how it works and what types of information are available. One of the benefits of our company is the diversity of the studios that we have. Just speaking about Rollic, they've joined on October 1, and the amount of learning that we're getting from their perspective on how hyper-casual market works, how they acquire, how they monetize from an advertising standpoint, same with Peak in terms of how they get long-term engagement, and frankly, the impact that they had on Harry Potter hasn't finished. That diversity in our studios and our product management and our data sciences is really a big strength of ours.

And we are investing in a lot of modeling and testing right now and building out some new capabilities, that not only improves the services and things that we have right now but invent new ones and starts to look more upstream in terms of how the ad markets are working and understand that dynamic and be able to harness it more to our advantage. So it's one of our core competitive advantages is information superiority because of the product management and data science. It's one of the things we will continue, to recruit great talent, leverage our studios against, and we are building out new capabilities, techniques there.

Eric Sheridan -- UBS -- Analyst

Maybe if I could just get one follow-up, if possible. How do you think about addressing the situation inorganically? Do you have to think about looking out into the broader digital advertising ecosystem and thinking about acquiring data analytic capabilities or thinking about inorganic deployment of capital against the opportunity probably for in-game monetization? Thanks so much.

Frank Gibeau -- Chief Executive Officer

Yes. The answer is yes. We do look at not only just game studios, but as we think about Zynga longer-term as a platform or a network, those types of opportunities are something that we have been considering and continue to consider. It's something that is super important in terms of maintaining our strength in data science and product management.

And as we embark on new capabilities, we're looking at build versus buy. We look at our talent base and try and figure out if there's opportunities to find those out there in the marketplace, and we haven't done any deals like that yet, but we don't rule them out.

Eric Sheridan -- UBS -- Analyst

Thanks so much.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Karnovsky with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

David Karnovsky -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Thanks for the question. Frank, can you expand a bit on the rapid prototyping approach you highlighted in the letter? What type of games should fall into this strategy? Should we think of them as having the potential of being forever franchise, or would these maybe be smaller games at a higher quality?

Frank Gibeau -- Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. David, there's a couple of areas where you see rapid prototyping from Zynga. The first is in Rollic, where they are releasing a dozen games a month almost in terms of the prototypes that they're looking at, the games that they're bringing into the shoot and testing, some they'll proceed with, some of that they won't proceed with but make adjustments. So very high product velocity from Rollic.

And the ideas that we see there sometimes have applicability back into the main part of the business. And that's something we're just starting to learn from is how hyper-casual can help inform the larger games, as well as continue to drive more and more ideas in this instant on ad-driven games that have very large audiences. So that's one area you see rapid prototyping. In other areas, for example, at Gram, we do put a lot of prototype games into soft launch that are testing a few things like core loop and an engagement curve.

And if we see heat, we start to build on it. If we don't see heat, we pull it back and call it a day, with that type of development model, has proven to be pretty successful for a lot of companies. And we think that as we look across our portfolio, there's going to be times and places for the big licenses like the Harry Potters and the Star Wars, but we're also going to be nimble in launching new ideas, testing them quickly. And if there's heat, we can double down on them, or if not, we can pull back.

We think that that evolution of our studios is a good thing.

David Karnovsky -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

OK. And then the letter mentioned some testing of new features for Merge Magic! and driving to enhance the long-term player experience. Maybe we're reading into it too much, but just wondering what's driving the initiative and does that create any kind of near-term headwind to monetization or engagement.

Frank Gibeau -- Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think one of the things that Merge Magic! and Merge Dragons! benefits from is that we have a lot of games that are older than they are and have scaled to performance levels that demonstrate the need for deeper social systems. Systems that are more collaborative and competitive in the other game. So those are some of the features that we're learning from in Empires & Puzzles and Words With Friends. Obviously, you see some of that taking hold at Harry Potter.

So as we work with Gram on their road maps for the next four quarters for each of those games, we inject new ideas from different parts of our businesses. And right now, what we'd like to see is Merge Dragons! and Merge Magic! invest more in systems and gameplay features that really drive that long-term elder game, where the players really are the content, playing together, cooperating, competing and we think that the universes and the games really lend themselves. There's lots of near-term events like Dragons and Prizes, we've got the holiday season, we have a really cool set of features that we're launching. And the season passes that we introduced for those games, we have some strength in.

So this is just part of ongoing development for live services games. As you grow them year after year, you're constantly adding new features and looking for areas inside the service where you think you can do better. And in this particular case, long-term player engagement is where we're focused on those two titles.

David Karnovsky -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mike Ng with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Mike Ng -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Great. Thank you very much for the question. First, I just want to ask about just the broader mobile game advertising environment. I think advertising came in a little bit better this quarter certainly than what I expected.

What are you seeing there? And is Rollic still pacing toward that $100 million annualized that you had originally talked about, or is it better or worse given heightened engagement with games more broadly? Thanks.

Ger Griffin -- Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. This is Ger. I'll take that one. We definitely saw improvement in demand in Q3 within advertising broadly.

And that obviously sounds true in terms of our performance for advertising in the quarter. It was obviously up year on year, and we grew sequentially. In terms of Rollic, Rollic is still on pace. The implied estimate for guidance is still in that $100 million range in terms of their bookings.

And so from that perspective, Q4, generally speaking, we see sort of growth in terms of advertising from a seasonal point of view. We do expect implied in our guidance is moderate growth from Q3 into Q4. Obviously, excluding Rollic. Rollic itself is a full quarter contribution and they're off to a great start as part of our Zynga.

They're engaged with our advertising team's data science team. So I think from our perspective, the integration of Rollic into Zynga is going very well.

Mike Ng -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Great. Thank you. And just a separate question on Harry Potter and new game profitability. Could you just remind us how long it typically takes for a new game to go from loss generating to profitability? At which point do you see Harry Potter bookings and say we have a sufficient number of users and we're in a good place in terms of marketing spend to start letting that profitability flow through to the bottom line?

Ger Griffin -- Chief Financial Officer

Yes. Generally speaking, the first-quarter games are out, depending on when -- it doesn't really matter. Whenever they turn up in the quarter, generally, you see the actual gross margin flow-through is less than the marketing. In particular, if you see a game that's got heat and then it's showing the right metrics from an engagement point of view and adoption, so our expectation is that Harry Potter will start becoming a flow through to the bottom line in its second quarter going to its third quarter.

The key here is when you have a game like Harry Potter or any of our games, which have that long-term engagement hook, what we're investing in right now is not just what's going to happen next quarter, it's what's going to happen over the lifetime, and we're building those layers of players into the game. And what we're seeing right now is really strong engagement in the game. We're seeing a lot of positive feedback on the game. So when you see that, you invest against that horse, and it's definitely going to be a dilutive impact to us in Q4 for obvious reasons because engagement is ahead of monetization.

And obviously, marketing is ahead of both. So from our perspective, Q4 will be dilutive. It was implied that way, whether it's one game coming out in Q4, two games. The original implied guidance for Q4, we're going to see pressure on margins more like 20%.

So still above our 20% hurdle. But you should see contributions from a margin perspective, absolutely from Harry in the full fiscal 2021 but starting in Q1 and Q2 of next year.

Mike Ng -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Excellent. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Eric Handler with MKM Partners. Your line is now open.

Eric Handler -- MKM Partners -- Analyst

Yes. Good evening and thanks for the question. I apologize if this has already been touched on. With regards to M&A and as you think about a possible debt raise, I'm just curious, how are you thinking about leverage over the next couple of years? And to what extent you're willing to add debt? And as you look at the deals that are out there right now, are you seeing any big changes in acquisition multiples?

Ger Griffin -- Chief Financial Officer

Eric, this is Ger. As it relates to debt leverage, broadly speaking, I'm thinking somewhere in the 2 to 3 times pro forma EBITDA. So that's how we think about a big picture. In terms of the multiples on acquisitions, again, if you look at our track record to date, we generally are targeting in on companies where there's an obvious win-win for the studio to join Zynga and leverage our capabilities and vice versa that we know we can apply the opportunity to grow that asset beyond whatever multiple they come in at.

So while there's always -- and particularly on the banks involved, there's always a potential for -- they ask for higher multiples. We haven't ever been driven to multiples that would make us feel worried about our ability to deliver shareholder value for Zynga shareholders. So from that perspective, I think we're feeling comfortable. We're still a destination for independent studios.

I was asked earlier on this call about the challenges of IDFA, etc. When you look at what Zynga is, in terms of our portfolio, forever franchises, Social Slots portfolio, casual cards, that's an aggregation of very talented studios that have creative independence and the ability to leverage the data science and publishing capabilities of Zynga. And that's our sales pitch. We're not here to change you the minute you joined.

We're here to amplify the strengths that you bring to the table, leveraging our strengths. And there's no shortage of opportunities out there for acquisitions, the mobile landscape is vast. And we're looking for talented teams that can bring IP, our capabilities to Zynga that would help us continue to accelerate our growth over the next few years.

Eric Handler -- MKM Partners -- Analyst

That's helpful. And at this point, when you look at your portfolio, are there any particular holes that you'd like to fill?

Ger Griffin -- Chief Financial Officer

OK. Say, on a specific genre or type of game, as Frank mentioned earlier, we're looking for talented teams that can bring games that can either obviously, continue to build on our investment in hyper-casual at Rollic, or they build long-term engagement franchises within the portfolio or give us additional capabilities. As was referred to earlier, if we find opportunities to enhance our advertising capabilities, our data science capabilities, through technology extensions or vertical integrations, we're interested in that as well. Beyond the mobile platform, we have said we see the opportunity in the future to expand our games from a free-to-play perspective onto other platforms, be it mobile, and so that's another area where we do focus in terms of looking for talented teams that can enhance our capabilities there.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Fitzgerald with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Brian Fitzgerald -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyst

Thanks, guys. We've heard about brand and budgets returning in some of the other calls this quarter to date. And, Ger, it sounds like that is showing up in your ad business as well. What are you seeing with the respect to pricing there? Is it getting more competitive? And that goes for both your customer acquisition channel but also the pricing you're seeing inside your ads as well.

Ger Griffin -- Chief Financial Officer

In terms of the -- brand advertising, in general, is better yields. So from that perspective, it's better than you get from the pure performance-based advertising. As it relates to performance-based advertising across the industry is a lot larger, but we are seeing improvement in the yields or we did see improvement in the yields in Q3, which is more market than anything we were doing from an optimization point of view, which has been a trend in the past where we obviously feel we've got very strong capabilities in that area. As it relates to what I would say -- if you flip it over to the user acquisition side, we've got, obviously, a very large and diversified portfolio.

So we are seeing pressure in some channels, but we're seeing opportunities in others. So I know that seems like a very Irish answer, but it is. We're continually looking to optimize the user acquisition investment into channels that we feel will deliver the right level of long-term return. As you saw in Q3, we were very happy with the overall engagement within our portfolio, and that helped us obviously optimize our user acquisition spend and deliver a stronger quarter from a profitability point of view.

As you see with Q4, we see the opportunity to invest both in our live services and Harry Potter, so you're going to see a little bit of pressure on our margins in Q4. But for the right ambition to drive stronger growth as we come out of Q4 into 2021.

Brian Fitzgerald -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyst

Thanks, Ger.

Operator

Thank you. And we have time for one last question. And that question comes from Matthew Cost with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Matthew Cost -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Hey, guys, thanks for taking the question. I have two. So on the expectations for 2021, obviously, you guys reiterated kind of the double-digit top-line growth number that you gave last quarter. I was wondering if you could dive a little bit deeper into the drivers of growth that you're expecting in that number kind of between the existing portfolio and then the new games with Peak and with Rollic.

And then secondly, just on the slots portfolio. I think you guys mentioned that it was another record quarter. It's actually bigger than last quarter for the Social Slots portfolio. So I'm just wondering what has been driving that? And when do you expect to see normalization in sort of that specific subsegment of the portfolio? Thanks.

Ger Griffin -- Chief Financial Officer

YeH. I'll take Slots first. I think the Slots portfolio is obviously still benefiting if you could use that word from the dynamic of shelter-in-place just purely because the Slots players are very passionate about their games, and they're obviously highly engaged persons. Once you have strong cohorts in these games, they stick with these games for a long time.

They're very much attached to brands in terms of their ethos. And what we've seen is, whether it's hit or rich, some of the existing games and our recently launched -- well, a year ago, we launched the Game of Thrones Slots, is performing really well. And so the portfolio is -- from when Frank joined or I joined six months afterwards compared to where we are now, this is a highly performant portfolio of slots games there, both top line and bottom line. And it's very much driven off engagement, bold beats, adding new content into those games.

And the additional game Game of Thrones Slots, obviously, was a big deal for that portfolio because it added a new title that's leading that growth between hit or rich. There are probably the two games that are having the strongest impact. In terms of your question on 2021 expectations, obviously, we expect, as we did back in Q2 earnings, to see double-digit growth. And the obvious thing to say is a full-year contribution from Rollic and from Peak is going to be a major driver of that.

But we do expect to grow our live services, including Harry Potter as part of that overall live service portfolio and so that we expect that to grow as well. The overall live services, if you think about it from a same-store sales of us, using the offers are like-for-like, there will be some challenges as you get into the second half of the year in terms of just what I would call the amplified impact of cohort on bookings year over year. But we still believe collectively that we're still going to see growth, obviously, given the size of the portfolio coming out of Q4 2020 into the year. The other thing I would say also is we still have games in development in terms of our pipeline.

So the expectation is we will see additional games come out. And just to clarify one thing as it relates to COVID, but the biggest bang from COVID was obviously due to -- we've seen normalization through the rest of the year, so TBD what that will mean. But as we sit here today, if you look at the fundamentals of our live services, the recently launched Harry Potter, the acquisition of Rollic, the full-year contribution from Peak, plus the pipeline of new games that we still have in development, including the ones in soft launch, we feel comfortable that we can grow the business year on year.

Matthew Cost -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator

[Operator signoff]

Duration: 61 minutes

Call participants:

Rebecca Lau -- Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Finance

Frank Gibeau -- Chief Executive Officer

Ger Griffin -- Chief Financial Officer

Alex Giaimo -- Jefferies -- Analyst

Mario Lu -- Barclays -- Analyst

Colin Sebastian -- Baird -- Analyst

Matthew Thornton -- Truist Securities -- Analyst

Eric Sheridan -- UBS -- Analyst

David Karnovsky -- J.P. Morgan -- Analyst

Mike Ng -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst

Eric Handler -- MKM Partners -- Analyst

Brian Fitzgerald -- Wells Fargo Securities -- Analyst

Matthew Cost -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst

More ZNGA analysis

All earnings call transcripts