You are viewing the archive: “Zynga”

Zynga Shares Zinged After It Relaxes Its Relationship With Facebook

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Thursday November 29, 2012 @ 3:30pm PSTTags: Facebook, Zynga

The stock price for the maker of Farmville and CityVille is down more than 12% in after hours trading, continuing a downward trend that has slashed Zynga‘s market value more than 72% since it went public last December. The latest decline follows the disclosure in an SEC filing that it has revamped the terms of its deal with Facebook: Beginning in April Facebook “will no longer be prohibited from developing its own games” according to the new terms. But Zynga now can introduce games on its own site, and doesn’t have to accept Facebook ads, steer transactions through Facebook Payments, or require users to sign in via the social network. Zynga games must be available to Facebook “shortly following” their launch unless there’s a technical problem or if they’re introduced in China or Japan. Zynga has been slashing expenses and realigning management as founder and CEO Mark Pincus said last month that it “did not execute to our satisfaction.” The company cited weakness in its Internet “invest and express” category, where players try to earn objects that they can display in the game. The company also said that it has taken longer than it anticipated to launch new games, and its web game The Ville could fall short of earlier expectations.

Comments (0)

Zynga Shares Dive After Game Maker Says It Will Report Q3 Loss

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Thursday October 4, 2012 @ 6:21pm PDTTags: Zynga

Shares are down 19% in post market trading following the disclosure that the company behind FarmVille and other popular Facebook games will report a net loss of as much as $105M in Q3 — a period when some analysts … Read More »

Comments (6)

Hasbro Licenses Rights To Zynga Games

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Thursday February 9, 2012 @ 12:52pm PSTTags: Hasbro, Zynga

SAN FRANCISCO & PAWTUCKET, R.I. — Hasbro, Inc. (NASDAQ: HAS) and Zynga (NASDAQ: ZNGA) announced today a comprehensive partnership that grants Hasbro the rights to develop a wide range of toy and gaming experiences based across Zynga’s popular social games and brands. As the world’s largest social game developer with more than 227 million monthly active users, Zynga has created some of the world’s most popular social game brands including FarmVille, CityVille and Words With Friends.

Through this agreement, Hasbro has obtained the license to develop and distribute wide ranging product lines based on Zynga’s game brands in a number of toy and game categories. This deal also creates an array of opportunities for co-branded merchandise featuring a combination of both Hasbro and Zynga brands.

Read More »

Comments (2)

Game-Maker Zynga Unveils IPO Plans As Investors Grow Wary Of Tech

By DAVID LIEBERMAN, Executive Editor | Friday December 2, 2011 @ 5:58am PSTTags: DreamWorks Animation, Dreamworks Animation Jeffrey Katzenberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Kung Fu Panda 2, Zynga

The maker of popular Facebook games including FarmVille and Mafia Wars says this morning in an SEC filing that it hopes to end up with nearly $890M from a public offering of 100M shares at an expected price of about $9.25 a share. The stock will trade at NASDAQ under the symbol ZNGA. The cash will be used for “general corporate purposes” which could include acquisitions. The company says it also plans to contribute a some of the net proceeds to charitable causes through its philanthropic initiative, Zynga.org. Today’s announcement follows its disclosure this past summer that it planned to go public — seizing on Wall Street’s infatuation with tech companies. Investors have become a little more skeptical about the category, though: For example, Pandora Media is down about 40% since it went public in June. LinkedIn is down 28% since May. And Groupon lost 27% of its market value after it hit the market early last month. Zynga investors also will have no power over the company. Read More »

Comments (3)