New stock to watch Zynga

[Hopperbin]

Traded on the american exchange as ZNGA
Zynga was originally organized in April 2007 as a California limited liability company under the name Presidio Media LLC. It was converted to a Delaware corporation in October 2007 and changed its name to Zynga Inc. in November 2010.

First day of trading Dec 16 2011 today.
IPO price was 10 bucks, was up to 11.5 and now in a free fall at 9.20.
over 100 million shares traded hands so far today over 1/7 of total shares, wow for a first day of trading.

They make 97 percent of their money through their relationship with facebook. They own the games on FB they are free for facebook users to play but they are addictive and gamers pay money to buy things they need in the game to advance themselves through the games.
LOL they dropped another 2 percent before I could finish typing this message, they are now at 9.03

[Hopperbin]

Now it just made 2 percent back

[grassfarmer]

Maybe a better stock than RIM, lol.

[Hopperbin]

Yes RIM is the most influential stock on the TSX today.

[Hopperbin]

2nd UPDATE: Zynga's IPO Quickly Sours As Stock Price Declines
1 hour ago - Dow Jones Newswires
--Stock trades lower after pricing at high end of range

--Decline doesn't bode well for future Internet and non-Internet offerings

--Executives say they aren't focused on first-day performance

(Updates with analyst comments in fourth through sixth paragraphs.)

By Lynn Cowan

Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

After weeks of anticipation and buzz, social-games maker Zynga Inc.'s (ZNGA) initial public offering quickly soured Friday, with shares dropping into negative territory in the first hour of trading, then continuing lower in the afternoon.

The company's stock opened at $11 a share on Nasdaq, up 10% from its initial public offering price of $10, but within the first 10 minutes of trading it "broke," falling below its IPO price. Zynga sold 100 million shares at the high end of its expected range of $8.50 to $10. Shares were changing hands recently at $9.02, down 9.8%.

Zynga's early trading performance Friday, a day when the Standard & Poor's 500 index was up, sounds a warning to other Internet and non-Internet companies planning IPOs in the new year. Though the IPO market is effectively closed for its annual holiday hiatus until mid-January, a negative performance from Zynga doesn't carry a good tone into 2012.

"It was one of those deer-in-the-headlights moments where people were just looking at their screens and saying, 'This can't be happening,'" said David Menlow, president of research firm IPOfinancial.com. "Investors now have had a pretty strong dose of reality."

Menlow, whose firm originally had forecast the stock would likely pop 50% on the first day, said social-media companies could be hurt in the near term.

"I would say even the $100 billion Facebook valuation is suspect for right now," Menlow added.

Zynga executives said they weren't going to focus on the stock's decline on its first day of trading, and saw no indication during their marketing road show that investors were anything but excited by the company's story.

"We've taken a long-term view in building this company, and we're not planning to obsess about where our stock price is today," Zynga Chief Executive Mark Pincus said during a telephone interview. "This is just day one. There are a lot more days ahead and we want to focus on delivering spectacular results over the next three years, and then we will see where the stock price is then."

Zynga's poor opening follows a period in which two social Internet companies, Groupon Inc. (GRPN) and Angie's List Inc. (ANGI), had good opening day performances, only to tumble below their IPO prices in the weeks that followed. The pair have since recovered some and are currently above their IPO prices but each stock is below the price it had reached on its first day of trading. Groupon had jumped 30.6% on its first day while Angie's List rose 25% on its initial day of trading.

Zynga's stock price is being watched closely by investors and other private companies considering becoming public. The biggest one on the horizon is social-networking giant Facebook Inc. Although Facebook hasn't officially filed for an IPO, it was widely expected to do so soon and then launch its offering some time in the second quarter.

What is surprising about Zynga's weak early-trading performance is that unlike Groupon and Angie's List, which were unprofitable when they debuted, Zynga has been making money since last year. Though its games are free to play, Zynga sells virtual goods to players, such as in-game farm animals and buildings, and its sells advertising.

And unlike Groupon and Angie's List, Zynga has marketing costs per player that aren't eating away at its bottom line because it relies on existing players on Facebook to draw their friends into its games, as well as promotions for new launches in its existing games.

Zynga is best known for such social games as FarmVille, CityVille and Mafia Wars, played on Facebook's website.

During its road show marketing the deal to investors, Zynga detailed how it adapts its games to consumers' tastes as they play. As the games progress, developers test out new features to see which ones will generate more virtual sales before adding them in.

In traditional gaming where players pay to access a program, revenue peaks soon after the product is launched and begins a slow decline. In Zynga's case, virtual-goods purchases can continue to rise even after the number of average daily users has declined from the peak, according to Chief Financial Officer David M. Wehner's presentation in a pre-recorded version of the road show available online.

"FarmVille had record bookings growth in the ninth quarter after it launched," Wehner said.

In the first nine months of the year, Zynga's total revenue doubled to $829 million from the same period a year earlier. Its net income declined 35% to $31 million during the same time, solely on higher income taxes; income before income taxes was up 48% at $82 million.

Although Zynga's games are available on other social networks and mobile platforms, substantially all its revenue is derived from Facebook-accessing players. It has the largest player audience on Facebook, with more monthly active users than the next eight social-game developers combined, according to AppData, an independent service that tracks application traffic on Facebook.

An obvious risk for Zynga is its reliance on Facebook, which has a lot of muscle when it comes to changing its rules for applications that appear on its platform. During its road show, Zynga's executives discussed alternate platforms for Zynga's growth away from Facebook, including Google Inc.'s (GOOG) Google , China's Tencent Internet portal, and its own website, Zynga.com.

With a total raise of $1 billion, Zynga's offering is the biggest U.S. Internet company IPO since that of Google Inc. (GOOG), which raised $1.9 billion in 2004, according to Dealogic.

The only other larger U.S.-listed deal was an IPO of $1.4 billion in May by Russian search-engine operator Yandex NV (YNDX).

But Zynga's IPO is smaller than what the company originally hoped it could obtain from the public markets. When it first filed to go public in July, it was seeking to raise $2 billion with a valuation of $20 billion, people familiar with the matter have told The Wall Street Journal.

When Zynga first filed its IPO plans, it was part of a rush of technology offerings hitting the market. Professional networking site LinkedIn Corp. (LNKD) doubled on its first day of trading in May and real-estate website operator Zillow Inc. (Z) gained 79% on its first day of trading in July. Both remain above their IPO prices, but have given back a significant chunk of their first-day gains.

Zynga's wasn't the only IPO to launch Friday. One other offering from energy partnership Inergy Midstream LP (NRGM) opened at $17 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, flat with its initial-public-offering price, and was changing hands recently at $17.17, up 1%. It sold 16 million common units at a price below its expected $19-to-$21 range.

Another offering that had been expected to debut Friday, from technology-services company FusionStorm Global Inc., was postponed, the third deal this week to be pushed back.

This week was originally expected to rack up 11 IPOs, the largest number listed in a week in the U.S. since November 2007. However, with three offerings postponed, it ended up just matching the eight offerings that launched in a single week last month.

Morgan Stanley (MS) and Barclays PLC's (BCS, BARC.LN) Barclays Capital managed Inergy Midstream's offering. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) managed Zynga's offering.

-By Lynn Cowan, Dow Jones Newswires; 301-270-0323; lynn.cowan@dowjones.com

[cottonpicken]

Agrium's announcement this week was
interesting,huge dividend increase(quadruple?),and
50% increase in potash production.

[Hopperbin]

Quadruple increase paid semi annually still works out to about 2/3 of one percent for the year. They should be paying at least 6 percent.

[buzz]

Kinda of hard for people like me to invest in a company like Zynga when I can't figure out what they sell???

[mustardman]

Cotton thats because the province only gets a Nickel out of every Dollar.