Online Social Gaming Zynga IPO Slides Down

Going into the public sector has not been inexpensive for Zynga. Everyone is interested in the potential that the social gaming presents to the online gambling industry. Dusting the cobwebs out of todays online gambling sameness is what the industry needs to attract the younger set and shake up the older generation of marketers and developers. Mobile internet can be the vehicle for the social gaming punter and it is already taking credit for record profits of online gambling firms that are offering it.

Getting back to Zynga they are showing revenues 32% over last year in the first quarter of 2012. Costs related to the company going public pulled the numbers onto the other side of the ledger. Zynga saw their revenues go to $325million better than expected. Zynga Poker, Farmville, Words With Friends are just a few of the Facebook connections the company has. A loss of $85.4m compared to net income of $16.8m in the same period a year before. Some of the reasoning is the public offering buy out that early employees decided to take, costing the firm $134m in stock compensation.

Zynga stock rose 3.4% on the news, then fell as much as 4.5% in after-hours trading, hitting the $9 mark just below its $10 IPO opening. Zynga’s daily active users went up 6% to 65million in the first quarter, while average daily bookings or virtual goods sales was up 8% to $0.055. Monthly active users rose 24% to 292m, while monthly unique users were up 25% to 182m. Monthly unique payers or those who willing paid to improve their game were 3.5m, a 21% rise since the forth quarter of 2011. This was said to be ‘significant’ by analysts. The IPO timing wasn’t great for Zynga but things can change in a hurry on the internet.