Zynga may soon name its price, as its IPO road show starts Monday

Interested in buying up a chunk of Zynga, eh? Well, the FarmVille maker just may name its price very shortly, as Fortune reports that the company will begin to pony around to investors next Monday. And with that, Zynga will likely make another amendment to its S-1 filing with the Security and Exchanges Commission (SEC) that would reveal its asking price for public shares along with how many shares will be made available.

Zynga filed for its initial public offering (IPO) way back in June of this year, and it finally looks like it's time to pull back the curtain and start taking offers. According to Fortune, company CEO Mark Pincus will join COO John Schappert (of EA fame) and CFO David Wehner in the dog and pony show to get investors excited about diving into Zynga, or ZNGA as it will appear on the Nasdaq.

The creator of top social games like CityVille seeks to raise $1 billion as a result of its IPO. Some expect a valuation, or projected worth of a company based on several factors, between $15 and $20 billion. That would make Zynga not only the most valuable social games company in the world, but the most valuable game company. Period. Well, that is if investors can look past Zynga employees driven to tears under company pressure.

[Via Inside Social Games]

If given the chance, would you ever invest in Zynga? Do you the company could become the most valuable game maker in the world?

Zynga profits plummet 90 percent, raises questions about imminent IPO

Will the big show still go on? That's what many wonder, as Zynga just revealed in an updated regulatory filing that its profits dipped by 90 percent in the June quarter, thanks to increased spending and a lack of major game releases earlier this year, Reuters reports. According to the news service, this raises questions as to whether the company can sustain growth ahead of its long-awaited IPO (initial public offering).

Zynga's net income took a nose dive to $1.4 million from $14 million a year earlier, and its net profit plummeted over 90 percent in three months from $16.8 million in March of this year. Reuters chalks this up to the fact that the filing shows that the FarmVille maker's expenses rose $149 million compared to a year earlier, and $59 million alone from the previous financial quarter.

We'd imagine a major chunk of those expenses are thanks to the 14 companies Zynga gobbled up in the past year. It's also worth noting that the developer didn't really release any major Facebook games in 2011 prior to Empires & Allies. (And no, we're not counting FarmVille English Countryside.) Since then, however, the company has been on a frenzy, launching three more Facebook games this summer: Words With Friends, Pioneer Trail and recently Adventure World.

This news speaks volumes to the fact that Zynga has reached a point where it constantly needs to produce in order to sustain its meteoric growth, and more importantly for them right now, the faith of investors. Since the company's last filing, Zynga conducted a third-party analysis that estimated the probability of an IPO at 75 percent. This is down from the 80 percent probability reported in Zynga's previous filing.

In other words, it looks like the anticipated Zynga IPO could be delayed, just as previous reports suggested, to wait for improved market conditions. However, EA is gaining on the company with The Sims Social, and fast. According to AppData, EA and Playfish's game has just about 1.6 million fewer daily players than CityVille's 12.9 million.

Do you think Zynga has anything to worry about, given the news? Would you ever invest in Zynga if given the chance? Sound off in the comments. 1 Comment