CYOU - Not a one-trick pony

CYOU is a pure-play online gaming company and was spun-off by the advertisement portal SOHU as a majority-owned subsidiary. It was a one-trick pony i.e. its popular MMORPG game TLBB and thus the stock did not move much in 2010. However the stock has considerably appreciated YTD due to continuous TLBB performance. The following two growth drivers are expected to keep investor attention in 2011.

CYOU is launching a new MMORPG game DMD (Duke of Mount Deer) with unique server technology. It enables social network features whereby, two servers can form an alliance against competing teams of servers so that larger communities of player can compete. In most 3D games currently, the battles are restricted to a couple of thousands of people within a server against another. But with DMD, given the server versus server, it allows two servers to form alliances and compete with or against competing alliances of servers. This expands the battles into allowing for up to 10,000 people to compete with another 10,000 people, and so this expansion in the community and interactivity of the game allows for more interaction.

CYOU used 20% of its $8/share cash to buy a web based gaming company in April i.e. 7Road for $68mn. 7Road brings along with itself its successful web game development skills and web games are a major aspect of the social networking sites that are all the rage in China today. Its major web game hit DDtank clocked $6m in latest quarter. This genre of online games i.e. web games ( non-MMORPG)  is expected to grow above 40% p.a. for the next few years as per iSuppli. 

PCU in the latest quarter for the company was 1 million, a slight decline of 3% quarter-over-quarter from 1.23 million last quarter.

CYOU is trading at cash adjusted PE of 8.1x. Current run-up should take it above 10X and thus multiple expansion alone will add 25% to current price. I believe earning growth could add another 10% on top of it and thus estimate a 35% upside i.e. $58 PT.

Catalyst: News flow on the success of DMD and related ACU would be most significant catalyst.