Zynga’s much-anticipated IPO finally arrived this week, landing with a thud instead of a bang on Friday as it began trading and quickly dropped below it’s $10 offering price.
While the IPO was sold at the high end of its range at a $10 offering price (with shares sold before trading opened on Friday to the general public), concerns remained with many potential investors about Zynga’s long term prospects.
The social games developer behind the likes of CityVille, FarmVille, and Mafia Wars raised $1 billion in its initial public offering of stock, making it the largest Internet-related IPO since Google went public in 2004 and raised $1.4 billion.
The company is currently valued at around $10 billion and is on track to take in over $1 billion in revenue in 2011, which comes from a mix of advertising in its games as well as purchases of additional boosts and in-game bonuses.
Zynga’s popular Zynga Poker app claims more than 30 million active users around the world, leading many in the online poker industry to keep a close eye on the company should it decide to enter the world of real money poker games.
Zynga has publicly stated it has no interest in doing so but Facebook’s recent announcement that it was in talks with partners to offer real money poker to its UK customers could signal a shift in strategy of online companies currently only in the free money poker space.
