'Farmville' Maker Zynga Harvests $1 Billion in IPO, Prices at $10
Farmville maker Zynga raised $1 billion late Thursday by pricing its initial public offering of 100 million shares at the upper end of its expected range.
The San Francisco-based online game maker priced its IPO at $10 a share, compared with estimates for a debut at $8.50 to $10.00 a share.
Zynga, which also makes Mafia Wars, Café World and Zynga Poker, is set to go public on the Nasdaq Global Market on Friday and will trade under the ticker symbol “ZNGA.”
Investors will be watching closely to see how Zynga’s stock performs in its debut and in the subsequent weeks and months. A number of high-profile next-generation Internet stocks such as Groupon (NASDAQ:GRPN), LinkedIn (NYSE:LNKD) and Pandora Media (NYSE:P) have failed to live up to the initial buzz generated by their IPOs,
Zynga was founded in 2007 by Mark Pincus, who is set to hold 36.2% of the total voting power of the company now that it's public.