READ WRITE WEB - Feb 17 - Zynga is the largest game developer on Facebook and raised $1 billion last year in an IPO of its stock. But investor enthusiasm has been lackluster since then, in large part because the company, which credits 90% of its sales to Facebook, is seen as being too dependent on social networking giant. Facebook takes a 30% cut of virtual wares sold in Zynga games. Zynga is now set to launch a publishing program in March that will let other game developers advertise their games on a separate Web portal. Zynga would keep a percentage of sales for games sold through its site.
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After Zynga Settlement, Layoffs Hit Vostu
TECH CRUNCH - Feb 14 - Brazilian social gaming giant Vostu is laying off an undisclosed number of employees. Vostu, which has raised $46 million from Intel Capital, Accel Partners, General Catalyst, and Tiger Technology Global Management, is one of the largest social gaming companies in Latin America. The gaming company was founded in 2007 by three Harvard classmates: CEO Daniel Kafie, chief scientist Mario Schlosser, and Joshua Kushner. It’s unclear what’s caused the layoffs but Vostu is fresh off of a settlement with Zynga over copyright issues.
Facebook: Zynga Generates 12% of Our Revenue
MASHABLE - Feb 1 - Lots of interesting numbers emerged from Facebook’s IPO filing Wednesday — including that Zynga, accounts for 12% of the company’s revenue. Facebook generated $3.71 billion in sales last year; ~$445M of that came from its partnership with Zynga. Facebook made $1.97 billion in 2010.
Zynga Accused Of Ripping Off Another Competitor’s Game
TECH CRUNCH - Jan 31 - Last week, the developers at NimbleBit accused Zynga of copying them with its new game, Dream Heights. Now, it’s happening again. This time, the accusation comes from Buffalo Studios, which says Zynga copied its flagship title Bingo Blitz with its launch of Zynga Bingo. Bingo Blitz claims to have over one million daily active users.
Zynga Gets Boost In Stock Rating And In Traffic
TECH CRUNCH – Jan 25 – Since going public in the middle of December, Zynga has been in a quiet period, but with that now lifted, five banks who underwrote its IPO and two independent analysts have chimed in on stock ratings and traffic. Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, and Barclays Capital all expect the stock to rise from its current $9.53 to somewhere in the $11-14 range, while Bank of America Merrill Lynch suggests a $10.50 target. Independent analysts are expecting Zynga to rise to the $11-12 range. In addition, newly launched games Scramble with Friends and Hidden Chronicles are bringing in 1.2M DAU and 1.7M MAU, and 5.9M DAU and 11.1M MAU respectively. Overall user counts are 55.6M DAU and 230M MAU, Zynga’s best showing in the last six months.
Zynga Acquires Four Mobile Gaming Companies
CNET NEWS – Jan 18 – San Francisco-based game maker Zynga announced today that in the last five months, it has purchased four mobile gaming companies, increasing its presence across multiple devices. Among the companies acquired by Zynga are German-based Gamedoctors (ZombieSmash), San Francisco-based Page44 Studios (World of Goo), San Francisco-based HipLogic, and New York-based Astro Ape Studios. Zynga declined to say how much it paid for the companies.
by Dara Kerr
See full article at CNet News
Zynga Needs Significant DAU Numbers To Stay Afloat
GAMASUTRA – Jan 18 – Cowen and Company has reported that social games giant Zynga must continue to gain new users at a significant rate in order to stay afloat with their current DAU count. Analyst Doug Creutz explained that Zynga’s newest releases have nowhere near achieved the success of past games released by the company. Hidden Chronicles, released on Facebook, reached 710,000 DAUs in 12 days, which is significantly less than the more than 5 million DAUs achieved by CasteVille and Empires & Allies during the same time period. According to the report, if Zynga averages a 20 percent decline each quarter, they will have to add 9-10 millions DAUs per quarter from new games just to maintain their current DAU numbers.
by Mike Rose
See full article at Gamasutra
Zynga Slides For Second Straight Day
THE STREET - Jan 9 - Shares of Zynga are sliding again today, down 8.7% to $8.03. Analyst Ben Schachter said he was worried about Zynga being overly dependent on a small percentage of its users for the majority of its revenues. According to Schachter, only 2.2% of the company's 150M users pay for its games.
Investors Dumping Social Networking Stocks En Masse
FORBES - Dec 20 - Zynga, which went public Friday at $10 a share, and dropped 50c by the close of the first day of trading, today fell another 45c, or 4.7%, to $9.05. Groupon on Monday fell $1.04, or 4.5%, to $22, still 10% above its November IPO price. LinkedIn was down 90c, or 1.4%, to $64.94. Pandora dropped 56c, or 5.3%, to $9.99. ;HomeAway fell $2.42, or 10.4%, to $20.88.
by Eric Savitz
See full article at Forbes
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Zynga Shares Down 5%
TECH CRUNCH - Dec 19 - Zynga, which debuted the largest technology IPO since Google on Friday, saw shares drop in early morning trading on the second day listed on the Nasdaq. On Friday, Zynga closed 10% below its opening trade of $11 per share, after pricing on Thursday evening at $10 per share. This morning, Zynga opened at $9.36 but dropped as much as 5% in morning trading.
Zynga COO John Schappert On Going Public
TECH CRUNCH - Dec 18 - After opening up at an aggressively priced $10 per share, the company had a slight pop before closing down 5% yesterday. But as Schappert emphasizes Zynga is here for the long-term and its investors should be thinking that way, too.
Q: How do you plan on spending the new money?
A: We will invest in future of gaming, notably social gaming. We’re also working to create new franchises and genres, like Castleville, which we recently launched on Facebook.
Q: Can you tell me more about your specific approach to localizing by language, country or region?
A: I can’t go down to country. But CityVille launched a year ago, and it was our first game that was localized into five languages at launch. Now, we launch in a dozen languages, and we continue to add more.
Q: What about your plans for other platforms? Mobile, Google+?
A: We’ve invested heavily. We’ve already talked about growing mobile by ten times to more than 11M DAUs. It’s still early on Google Plus, we still have hopes that Google will continue to invest there. We’re also on Tencent [a leading web copmany] in China.
Q: Can you tell me any more about how Tencent is going?
A: It’s still very early for us.
Q: How do you expect ad revenue to grow versus virtual goods, which is currently the core of your business?
A: Ads revenue have grown 160%.
Zynga IPO Prices At $10
TECH CRUNCH - Dec 16 - Zynga priced its IPO at $10 a share. The IPO, which is set for tomorrow, will be in the upper end of the $8.50 to $10 price range the company indicated previously in SEC filings. Zynga will sell at least 100M shares, raising $1 billion at a $7 billion valuation.
Zynga Now Has The Top Five Games On Facebook
TECH CRUNCH - Dec 12 - This is a big week for Zynga, as the gaming giant readies for its debut on the public markets at the end of the week. The company’s offering is expected to price this week and will raise ~$1 billion in the IPO. Currently, Zynga has the top five games on Facebook using daily active user numbers, with Words With Friends edging out EA’s Sims Social. CityVille took the top spot with 10.1M DAU, followed by CastleVille (8.1M DAU); FarmVille (7.2M DAU); Texas HoldEm Poker (6.3M DAU) and Words With Friends (5.7M DAU).
Zynga Said To Receive Enough Orders To Cover All 100 Million Shares In IPO
BLOOMBERG - Dec 8 - Zynga, the biggest maker of games on Facebook, received enough orders to cover all the shares being sold in its IPO. Zynga plans to sell 100M shares for $8.50 to $10 apiece, according to regulatory filings. The high end of that price range would value Zynga at $7 billion.
by Zijing Wu and Douglas MacMillan
See full article at Bloomberg
Zynga To Go Public At $10 Billion Valuation
CNET NEWS - Nov 30 - Zynga's highly anticipated public offering is expected to value the company at $10 billion, well below a recent analyst estimate. The game developer, which is expected file its IPO plans with regulators on Friday, intends to raise $900M based on a share price range of $8 to $10,
Zynga’s CastleVille: 5 Million Users Less Than A Week
MASHABLE - Nov 22 - Zynga‘s CastleVille has had a solid opening. In just under a week, the game has garnered 5M daily active users — meaning it’s growing faster than any other Zynga game did at this stage.
Zynga Q3 Revenue Up 80% To $306.8M
TECH CRUNCH - Nov 4 - Zynga just filed a new S-1 today in its upcoming IPO, reporting new revenue, income, and usage stats. Revenue came in at $306.8M for the quarter, which is up 80% from Q3 2010. Net income was $12.5M, down 50% from the Q3 2010 ($27.2M).
Zynga IPO Set for November
MASHABLE - Oct 25 - Zynga‘s long-awaited IPO will hit a week before Thanksgiving. Zynga’s IPO, set for roughly November 17, appears back on track just as Groupon appears to be once again readying its plans to go public, also in November. Other social media-related IPOs, including the largest of them all, Facebook’s, are set for 2012.
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