As those of you wanting to get in on some sweet, sweet Zynga stock have been waiting with bated breath, you’ll be happy to know that Zynga has finally gone public, setting each share at an expensive $10 a pop. Zynga’s initial public offering is one of the biggest of the year — and looks to stay that way with only a few weeks left in said year — and is the biggest tech IPO since Google’s back in 2004. Yeah, the company that makes that game your mom plays is doing pretty well for itself.
Zynga will being trading on the NASDAQ today, under the stock symbol ZNGA, probably furious that they couldn’t squeeze in the “y.” At the opening bell, Zynga was valued at $8.9 billion, raising as much as $1.15 billion. Earlier this year, speculation said that Zynga’s valuation will be somewhere around $20 billion, which we can see now was a tad too high.
Speculation says that Zynga might have actually achieved the ridiculously high valuation that it failed to reach, if not for growing negativity toward the company, some of which is covered in the related links below. However, Lori Hoberman, chair of emerging companies and venture capitalist practice at law firm Chadbourne & Park LLP, states Zynga is actually managing expectations, and are being more conservative than, for instance, Groupon and LinkedIn were — something one wouldn’t expect if they followed all of the Zynga drama.
It’ll be interesting to see where Zynga goes from here, but one can only assume it’ll be to another Ville.
(via VentureBeat, The Wall Street Journal)
- Rovio and PopCap said no to a Zynga Takeover
- Zynga told its employees to give back stock or get fired
- Zynga is trying to figure out a way around Facebook
