Around the Net
Zynga Makes Big Public Debut
- San Jose Mercury News, Friday, December 16, 2011 12:32 PM
Making a grand entrance, Zynga debuted on Nasdaq Friday morning at an asking price of $11 a share. As MercuryNews.com note, the price was 10% higher than the online gaming company's initial public offering price of $10. The result? Zynga sold a staggering 100 million shares at the IPO price, raking in $1 billion and valuing the company at $7 billion.
Even more impressive, “some analysts believe the stock will rise much higher during its first day of trading Friday on the Nasdaq stock exchange,” Mercury News writes. Indeed, as retail investors buy the stock on the open market Friday, the company's value "could at least briefly top $20 billion, and that will get everybody's attention," according to Sam Hamadeh, CEO of PrivCo.com, a compiler of financial data on private companies.
What did Zynga do right? Other that establishing the premier social gaming company on Facebook’s back, management took a different IPO track than other tech companies that have gone public this year -- pricing the stock lower than expected and offering a great deal more of the company -- 14.7 percent,” Mercury News notes.
