DealBook: Live from San Francisco, Zynga Rises 10% On Debut

Zynga, the online gaming company, kicked off its first day of trading with the usual fanfare.

At the San Francisco headquarters, decorated with massive red banners, founder Mark Pincus rang in the opening bell, flanked by his teary-eyed wife Ali and the Nasdaq chief Robert Greifeld. Before a packed room of employees and investors, he motioned to “raise the roof,” in celebration of the initial public offering.

“We brought the Nasdaq here,” said Mr. Pincus, 45. “With our I.P.O. we’re accelerating this mission of connecting the world through games, it’s just getting bigger.”

But the market debut lacked the same pomp.

At the opening, Zynga’s shares rose a modest 10 percent, to $11, and then quickly pulled back. The stock is currently trading at $9.30, below its offering price.

Zynga’s weak performance reflects the broader market for initial public offerings. Newly public technology stocks have been buffeted by macroeconomic turmoil and jittery investors, who remain skeptical about the business models.

Several Internet companies have stumbled below their offering. Pandora remains more than a third off its initial price. Nexon, the Zynga of Asia, fell on its first day of trading this week.

Earlier in the year, investors had high expectations for start-ups. On the first day of trading, the 42 technology companies that went public this year jumped 20.4 percent on average, according to data from Renaissance Capital, the I.P.O. Advisory firm. But they have since struggled, with the group falling 15 percent.

Zynga’s trajectory has followed a similar path. In early summer, insiders pegged the market value of the social gaming company at nearly $20 billion. At its offering price, Zynga, which raised $1 billion, went public a more muted $7 billion.

“Raising $1 billion is a large number, particularly in these choppy equity markets where investors seem to be hesitant to take on much risk,” said Peter Falvey, a managing director of Morgan Keegan’s technology group. But “there clearly isn’t a rush to get into the stock at these valuations.”

Zynga’s executives brushed aside Friday’s tepid reception, calling it an insignificant data point in the context of the company’s grander goals. John Schappert, Zynga’s chief operating officer, said he had no regrets about the timing or the structure of the offering, which, at 14 percent of total shares, was bigger than other tech I.P.O.s this year.

“We’re not looking at it today or tomorrow, or what we could have squeezed out.” Mr. Schappert said. “We’re looking at the long run.”

In the coming months, Zynga will be a critical test for the fragile market. Traders are closely watching the stock to get a sense of how Facebook will fare, when it goes public next year. The social network giant is widely expected to go public in the second quarter of 2012, at a market value greater than $100 billion.

Financially, the game maker is on better footing than many of its unprofitable Internet peers. The company recorded earnings of $30.7 million for the first nine months of this year, on revenue of $828.9 million. Zynga’s is also the largest gaming company on Facebook, with some 222 million monthly users.

But Zynga also has its fair share of skeptics. User growth has slowed in recent quarters, while marketing spend remains high. Zynga spent $122 million on marketing and sales for the first nine months of the year, more than all of 2010. There is also lingering concerns about Zynga’s dependence on Facebook, despite efforts to build out its mobile games and an independent platform.

The headwinds, for now, don’t seem to bother Zynga’s early venture capital backers, many of whom only plan to sell a small amount of shares, if any, in the offering. John Doerr, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers — Zynga’s second largest shareholder — said he felt giddy this morning, heading over to the game maker’s headquarters before sunrise.

“Five, ten years from now, we’ll look back at this moment and think it was just the beginning,” said Mr. Doerr, who has backed companies like Google and Amazon. “This is the beginning of the second Internet boom.”

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