Andre Yoskowitz
29 Jun 2011 2:10
Zynga, the social gaming behemoth, is filing for an IPO that will value the company at upwards of $20 billion, a new record for "social" media sites and a high for U.S.-based game companies.
The company is behind hits like CityVille, FarmVille, Live Hold Em Poker Pro and Empires & Allies, each of which have multi-millions of active users. CityVille, for example, has 88 million monthly users on Facebook and Zynga games have a total of 271 million active monthly users.
Last month, the professional social network LinkedIn IPO'd and saw huge gains its first day before falling 50 percent over the next three weeks. Having since recovered some, the company has an $8 billion market value despite never having seen a profit. Streaming music service Pandora IPO'd earlier this month and now has a $2.8 billion market value despite never having seen a profit, either.
Zynga is looking to raise about $1.5 billion with its IPO, which would value the company somewhere between $15-$20 billion, higher than Activision Blizzard ($13.26 billion) and Electronic Arts ($7.5 billion).
The company is insanely profitable, already, and made $400 million net profit on $850 million in revenue in 2010. Analysts expect the company to make around $500 million net profit on revenue of $1.5 billion in 2011. The company primarily makes money from the sale of virtual goods (upgraded farm equipment in FarmVille, millions of poker chips in Live Hold Em, etc) since their games are all free.