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Friday 16 December 2011

Stock Listing Values FarmVille Maker At £5.9bn

The online games maker behind hits like FarmVille and CityVille is expected to make a strong stock market debut, after raising the most cash by an internet firm since Google's public listing.
Zynga sold 100 million shares, representing 11% of the company, at $10 (£6.45) a piece at its initial public offering (IPO) on Thursday.
The $1bn (£645m) investment values the company at $9.1bn (£5.85bn).
Google made $1.9bn through its IPO in 2004 and is now valued at more than $200bn (£129bn).
Zynga publishes four of the top five games played on Facebook, including Texas HoldEm Poker and CityVille, and has more than 200 million monthly users on the social networking site alone.
Despite the popularity of its games, it generates revenue from less than 3% of its users through sales of premium in-game items like poker chips and trucks.
It is highly dependent on Facebook, with 95% of its earnings coming from the site, but its products are available through stand-alone apps for Apple and Google Android mobile devices, and on Google+, MySpace and Yahoo.
The trading in Zynga's shares on the NASDAQ exchange has been highly anticipated by investors keen to get a slice of Facebook's growth before Mark Zuckerberg's company has its own listing.
Analysts predict shares could rise over 20% on their first day of trading before stabilising.
However, Groupon and LinkedIn are both trading below their IPO price despite an initial surge after they first listed.
Zynga was named after a bulldog once owned by the company's founder Mark Pincus, who will still have major control over the firm with 70 times more voting rights for each of his shares than those sold on the stock market.
The San Francisco-based firm is on track to make $1bn (£645m) in revenue this year, posting $12m (£7.72m) in profits during the third quarter

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