Mixi Denies Nikkei Report that CEO Wants to Sell 55% Stake

There’s much discussion going on today about a Nikkei Business Daily report that says Mixi’s founder and CEO, Kenji Kasahara, is considering selling his 55 percent stake in the company. Mixi (TYO:2121) was very quick to issue a response on on its website, saying that it the report that Mixi was considering selling itself is not true.

It should be noted that Nikkei Business Daily is somewhat hit-and-miss, serving up more than a few juicy rumors that have proven not to pan out, such as the rumor last December of a 4G LTE iPhone coming to Docomo. But given the fact that Mixi has been floundering over the past year.

Indeed, as many as 44 percent of its users now could be so-called ‘ghost users’ who don’t log even log in once a month, as you can see in the chart below from news.livedoor.com [1]:

From: news.livedoor.com

The Nikkei report says that mobile gaming companies GREE and DeNA are to make bids for the CEO’s stake. Serkan Toto has a good rundown of the situation over on his blog, and comments on this possibility:

What’s interesting for both companies is that Mixi is clearly a mobile social network, as over 80 percent of their roughly 30 billion page views come through mobile devices. Another example: the number of smartphone MAU shot up from 3.8 million in July last year to over 7 million in March 2012. Games on Mixi, however, have been a disappointment, financially speaking.

Serkan also notes that Facebook would be unlikely to be interested in Mixi, and we agree given that Zuckerberg and company don’t appear to be having difficulty building a user base in Japan (see Social Bakers for the latest stats).

While there might not be anything to this particular report, the fact remains that Mixi has been more or less treading water for a year. And as more successful social juggernauts continue to float on by, it only makes sense that Mixi make a move soon or else begin to sink.