06:16 AM EDT, 05/10/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Unity Software's ( U ) shares fell early Friday after recording an unexpected higher first-quarter loss, while the gaming software company projects its strategic portfolio revenue to decline annually for the ongoing period.

Revenue from the strategic portfolio, which includes the firm's create and grow solutions segments, is set to come in between $420 million and $425 million for the second quarter, Unity said late Thursday. The guidance reflects a yearly decrease of 6% to 7%, while the company logged a 2% increase in strategic portfolio revenue for the March quarter.

For full-year 2024, the company continues to expect strategic portfolio revenue to be in a range of $1.76 billion to $1.8 billion. Shares of Unity have tumbled 38% so far this year and declined 3.1% in recent premarket activity.

"In create, we expect the second half to continue to come from growth in subscriptions in both games and industries," Chief Financial Officer Luis Visoso told analysts during a conference call, according to a Capital IQ transcript. In grow, we expect the second half acceleration to be driven by improvements in performance in our monetization solutions and better usage of data to train our models and deliver that return on ad spend for our customers."

For the first quarter, the company's net loss widened to $0.75 a share from $0.67 the year before, while the consensus on Capital IQ was for a per-share loss of $0.64. Overall revenue slipped 8% to $460.4 million, but topped the Street's view for $436.4 million.

Create solutions revenue gained 17% to $133 million mostly driven by growth in subscriptions and strategic partnerships, Unity said in a shareholder letter. Revenue from the grow solutions segment slid 4% to $294 million, with the company saying it is making progress in improving its mediation platform and ad networks.

Revenue from the firm's non-strategic portfolio slumped 59% year-on-year to $34 million, reflecting its efforts to refocus on its core business. The company plans to exit from its non-strategic businesses, which are set to "decline going forward and be in the single digits at the end of this year."

"The portfolio and cost reset that we started a few months ago is completed," according to Unity. "While we will always look for efficiencies, our attention turns to accelerating revenue growth while operating at attractive profit and cash flow margins."

Last week, the company appointed former Zynga (ZNGA) Chief Operating Officer Matthew Bromberg as its new chief executive, effective May 15. Bromberg will succeed interim CEO Jim Whitehurst, who will become executive chair of Unity. Chairman Roelof Botha will transition to a lead independent director role on the firm's board.

Price: 23.12, Change: -1.04, Percent Change: -4.30