If it were a video game, it would be one of those where the bonus round never seems to end, running the player’s point totals up into the hundreds of thousands. The hot streak enjoyed recently by shares of GLU Mobile (Nasdaq: GLUU) has certainly been enough to make investors sit up and take notice.
The game maker, based out of San Francisco, has been flexing its muscle of late, strengthening Friday to within a few aces of the $5.00 mark, albeit still shy of its 52-week peak of $6.10, but remarkable nonetheless. GLUU shares have surged 14.8% over the past 52 weeks, while the S&P 500 index has gained 5.84% in the same period.
The company has developed and published a portfolio of casual and traditional games for a cross-section of the users of smartphones and tablet devices who purchase its games through direct-to-consumer digital storefronts, as well as users of feature phones served by wireless carriers and other distributors.
Some of GLUU’s flagship products are Beat It!, Bonsai Blast, Brain Genius, Glyder, Gun Bros and Hero Project. In all the hubbub over what brand of technology will make it in today’s competitive market GLUU appears unfazed.
Earlier this week, such sage prognosticators as The Motley Fools proclaimed "with the growing popularity of smartphones running operating systems such as Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android and Apple's iOS, the company has shifted its focus to smartphones and tablets."
The "Fools" went on to say that "while feature phone-based gaming revenue dropped by more than 58% in the past two years, smartphone gaming revenue shot up by a staggering 700%. Glu is showing great growth momentum in the right area."
Other points in GLUU’s favor: the company’s monthly active user numbers have risen steadily from a figure of just 12 million in the fourth quarter of 2010, to 31 million in the comparable quarter of 2011. The company's daily active users have tripled from 944,000 to 2.8 million during the same period.
From what The Motley Fools dubbed "small fry" in terms of initial market capitalization not too long ago to where GLUU appears poised to take on in the very near future, this is a stock very much worth watching before its price gets too rich for the blood of most investors.
