The maker of the addictive Candy Crush Saga mobile game has secretly filed documents to go public in the U.S., the Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday.
British firm King.com relied on one aspect of the JOBS Act that allows smaller companies with annual sales of less than $1 billion to start the public offering process confidentially. Twitter took advantage of the same provision when it filed its IPO earlier this month.
King boasts an average of 100 million daily active players, with its smash hit Candy Crush — the most popular game on Facebook — drawing more than 600 million active game sessions from mobile devices each day.
The deal is worth an estimated $5 billion, according to the newspaper, but analysts are calling the listing move “risky” given the low number of public offerings by tech companies this year and the tendency for games to be fleeting and faddish.