...Mark Pincus On Why Zynga Stumbled - Earnings Call 0 comments, 0 called-out + Comment now + Comment now Mark Pincus (Photo credit: Joi) Zynga didn’t execute on its recent new games and it underestimated the speed of mobile adoption, which led to its current problems, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said in a conference call with analysts following its earnings release Wednesday. Forbes Staff In part to bring back its high growth, Zynga plans to launch two new web games per quarter and four games per quarter in 2013. It also plans to expand to other genres such as casino games and “player versus player” conflict games, Pincus said. Zynga underperformed due to two factors, Pincus said. First, the company didn’t execute well on web games such as CityVille and CastleVille. The company found it “more challenging” to maintain its historical games and it had a “faster decline in bookings than expected.” Or to put it simply, “We didn’t create enough heat for players” in content and features, Pincus said. Also the company didn’t bring new games to market fast enough to offset the declines from the older games. Secondly, mobile adoption was faster than Zynga expected. That increased competition for Zynga’s users. Still Pincus pointed to successes in its web games FarmVille 2 and ChefVille. FarmVille 2 had 17 million installs in its first 21 days. On the key mobile sector, Pincus said mobile now represents 20% of Zynga’s bookings. The company also reorganized its staff so that...
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...Zynga una empresa que desarrolla videojuegos sociales en línea, basándose en los sistemas de Web 2.0 y los presenta como aplicaciones widget en redes sociales como Facebook o MySpace. Con más de 240 millones de usuarios activos mensuales en sus juegos CityVille, FarmVille, Zynga Poker, etc; es considerado líder mundial y una de las almas de Facebook. Zynga lanzó su Oferta Pública Inicial el 16 de diciembre de 2011, con sus títulos a 11 dólares, (el precio anunciado a principios de diciembre fue de entre 8.5 y 10 dólares), pero las acciones se devaluaron en su primer día de su salida a la bolsa. Meses antes, se había especulado que en el lanzamiento de su OPI la compañía conseguiría una valoración de hasta 14.000 millones de dólares, pero luego ésta bajó a 10.000 millones de dólares, y finalmente al salir sus acciones al mercado, la valoración de la compañía fue de 7.500 millones de dólares. En su primer día de lanzamiento el precio cayó casi un 15 % por debajo del precio inicial, y casi un mes después, el precio seguía bajando, con un piso de 8 dólares, es decir la acción acumulaba un 27% de rendimiento negativo, como se puede ver en el siguiente gráfico que muestra los precios entre el 15 de diciembre de 2011 y el 15 de enero de 2012: Todo indica que inicialmente hubo una sobrevaloración de los títulos, pues la volatilidad de la economía, sumado a la poca confianza de los inversores en la compañía, hicieron bajar su cotización inicial. Sin embargo la compañía...
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...Mark Pincus founded Zynga, a social game service provider company, in 2007. During the first few years, Zynga was very successful and generated a profit of almost $100 million with successful games such as FarmVille, Mafia Wars, and CityVille. However, in 2013, the number of Zynga users was rapidly decreasing. According to AppData, the MAUs (Monthly Average Users) for Zynga have fallen below 127 million, which was the lowest it has ever been. In addition, stock prices dropped from $14 to $3 per share causing a net loss of almost $600 million. As a result Pincus was kicked off the board and replaced by another CEO. Now Pincus has returned to Zynga in hopes of turning the company back around, but the problem is how and in which market should Pincus choose to do so in. Pincus has already started to make some changes with his return, but Zynga needs to do a lot more if it wants to compete again. Analysts have made recommendations but Zynga needs to flat out create new hit games. Currently, Zynga has two opportunities that will decide which path they take: One route involves selling to a private investor to complete its turnaround behind closed doors. The other route is where Zynga makes big financial bets on building potential mega-hits and stays public. The first strategy Zynga has is to stay public, and not sell to a private investor. At their current price, yes, Zynga can go private, but it doesn’t mean that will happen. There are four main benefits for Zynga to stay public and...
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...Company Information Zynga Inc., formerly Presidio Media LLC, incorporated in Delaware in 2007, and is the leading provider of social media games to date. With the advent of social media, such as Facebook, the company has grown exponentially in just a few short years and in December 2011 became a publicly traded company. The information enclosed in this report, unless otherwise stated in the footnotes and bibliography, is from Zynga’s Form 10-K for the period ending 12/31/11. The purpose of this paper is to utilize the tools, concepts, and knowledge provided in Accounting 305 to analyze a company’s financial statement and accompanying footnotes. Income Taxes For the year ended December 31, 2011, Zynga reported a pre-tax loss of -$406.1 million, a 420% decrease from the previous year (or -$533.1 million); pre-tax income for 2010 was $127 million. In addition to high research and development costs, Zynga’s net loss can also be attributed to “stock-based compensation expenses associated with ZSUs (Zynga’s restricted stock units) that vested in connection with their initial public offering (IPO).” As a result, income tax benefit for the year ended December 31, 2011 was $1.8 million, yielding a net loss of -$404.3 million. Deferred tax asset (current and noncurrent) as of December 31, 2011 and December 31, 2010 was $77.9 million and $36.1 million, respectively. Deferred tax liabilities (current and noncurrent) as of December 31, 2011 and December 31, 2010 was $68.2 million...
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...Questions: 1. Imagine you are the new HR director at Zynga. What do you think you might do in this situation to limit the potential loss of a large number of very talented employees? a. As the new HR director at Zynga, I would first, plan to avoid a turnover. I would begin to formulate a plan to bring about more reasons for the employees I currently have to stay; this could include more incentives, more stocks, better health care, 401-K, but is not limited to these depending upon what would be catered best to the employees of Zynga. If worse came to worse, I would begin planning on who would be able to take places of those who left and eliminate jobs that are not actually needed and assign the “have to have” jobs to the most experienced employees that remain. 2. Are there any benefits or incentives that you can think of that might make more people want to stay on at Zynga after an IPO was complete and they could “get their money”? a. A “benefit” that would bring much stress relief to employees would be for them to take a small bit of pressure off of them. If the senior managers let their team know what is due by when and monitor halfway to the deadline (or sooner depending upon the priority of the assignment) rather than constantly monitor, that would help keep many of the employees. Along with that stress relief if the CEO and senior managers were less vocal and belittling, less stress would be upon the employees. b. Another benefit to the employees could be to offer those...
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...Case Study: Zynga Introduction Thesis: Zynga’s business strategy is successful but not sustainable. Purpose This case study highlights the success of Zynga in online games. This forms an excellent basis for assessing the relationship between durable and virtual products. The continuous over- reliance of Zynga on Facebook is also another essential aspect of consideration in paper. Finally, the case study addresses the various implications of Zynga on the existing video game business. Overview Zynga is among the world’s most popular online gaming firms. The firm has been operational since 2007. During this period, Zynga’s popularity has increased because of its unique approach to online gaming. Whereas most gaming companies produce games with innovative features, Zynga relies on customer analytics (Laudon, 2012). This involves the assessment of trends evident among the gamers. For instance, Zynga analyzes the most popular game features among the users. Facebook forms the platform for more than 90% of Zynga’s games. Question a: Among the most notable strategies used by Zynga is the development of “durable” and virtual products. From the context of gaming, “durable” products encompass online goods whose lifespan is considerably longer compared to the “nondurables”. The phrase “virtual” comes into application because they are sold and used online. An example of a marketing relationship between the durable and virtual products is the use of sale of virtual real estate...
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...About Banglalion Banglalion Communications Ltd (Banglalion) is the largest 4G Wireless Broadband operator in Bangladesh which is using WiMAX technology at present and obtained nationwide license from BTRC to provide Broadband Wireless Access services. Banglalion license covers Data, Voice and Video. Banglalion now covers 7 divisional headquarters and 38 major districts of Bangladesh and expanding rapidly with a goal to cover the whole country by the end of 2013. Banglalion is proud to declare that it is the largest 4G network of Bangladesh in terms of coverage, subscriber number and revenue. The Technology At present Banglalion is using the latest 4G WiMAX (Wireless Interoperability for Microwave Access) technology allowing you to get as fast as 2 mbps speed which enables you to enjoy high speed wireless mobile connectivity. Banglalion understands that people and businesses in Bangladesh need and want faster, accessible, and affordable wireless broadband services. Banglalion is working hard to ensure those. Banglalion has already obtained the permission from BTRC to deploy more advanced 4G LTE (Long Term Evolution) network. Through this technology, Banglalion would be able to provide even faster mobile broadband connectivity more effectively. LTE would enable our customers to enjoy blazing speed and more stable, uninterrupted connectivity in both fixed and on the go environment. Banglalion is expecting to start offering LTE based services from Mid 2014. Mission, Vision, Values ...
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...to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Zynga Games. The dependence of the Zynga Games on Facebook is also discussed in the paper. The paper will also throw light on the effects of Zynga Games on the video games industry and the sophistication of the accessible games. Overview of paper The paper will start with an introduction of Zynga Games. Then the marketing relationship between a virtual and a durable product will be discussed. The next section of the paper will include the effects of the dependence of Zynga Games on Facebook. The next part will include the opinion about Zynga Games that will it have a negative effect on the existing video game business and the sophistication of the games available. The last part will include the conclusion of the paper. Recommendations to Zynga Games will also be included at the end of the paper. The last part is the references section. A brief summary of the Case Study is also available at the end of the paper. Marketing Relationship Between A Virtual And A Durable Product A virtual product has different ways of marketing than the durable products. The relationship between these two is that both of them are marketed in an essentially similar way. The virtual products that are marketed by Zynga are also durable. They market the products in a way that the customers find them durable. The durable products in the online market are also marketed in the same way. Dependency of Zynga on Facebook http://investcorrectly.com/20...
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...Companies must often restate their financial statements to address certain issues that have occurred within the company including changes in accounting principles, changes in accounting estimates, changes in the reporting entity, and errors in their financial statements. “The FASB classifies changes in these categories because each category involves different methods of recognizing changes in the financial statements” (Kieso, Weygandt, & Warfield, 2007, p. 1153). Zynga is the social gaming company responsible for games including Farmville and Mafia Wars. In August of 2011 the company was faced with restating their financial statements for the first quarter of that year due to the detection of certain errors regarding their stated deferred revenue balances. Restatement On August 11, 2011 Zynga, “restated Q1 revenue to reflect an accounting error in its original IPO registration. The new Q2 revenue figure is $242.89 million, which represents more than a 3% increase over the previously-reported figure” (Primack, 2011). Zynga stated that they initially stated their most current estimate for paying players for the current period. However, they did not adjust their ending balance in the account deferred revenue to reflect estimates for the related sales of prior periods. The company determined that ASC 250 required this adjustment of the ending balance for deferred revenue. “As a result, we restated our March 31, 2011 financial statements and determined we had a material weakness in...
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...《信息技术和信息社会》案例分析 (共两个案例，请尽可能在案例背景下，进行批判性思维critical thinking，给你的你想法。你的逻辑、创意、所运用的课程中的知识点是我所看重的) 案例1. Zynga Wins with Business Intelligence 这是一家高速发展的游戏公司，但它并不是以逼真的图像，令人心悸的动作，或者史诗般的故事著称，也不为Playstation, Xbox, 或者Wii开发游戏。这家公司就是Zynga。如果你有Facebook的账户，很大可能你会很熟悉它所开发的游戏。Zynga爆炸式发展表明社会游戏的潜力以及社会化网络在提供关键数据理解公司客户的能力。 Mark Pincus和一群创业者在2007年创建了Zynga，如今这家公司已经成为社交网络游戏的领行者，它的游戏包括CityVille、Texas HoldEm Poker、FarmVille、Empires & Allies等。这四款游戏是Facebook上最为流行的应用。Zynga的游戏有将近3亿月活跃用户以及6千多万日活跃用户，他们每天就会产生3TB的数据。自创建以来，Zynga便将数据分析放在优先级位置上，以方便对其游戏的管理以及公司的商业决策。 这家公司极度依赖数据来提高用户保有，增加游戏玩家的相互协作。用Zynga的首席数据官的话来说，有用的数据必须是“可行动的” – 它必须使能够帮助Zynga对其游戏做出显著改进的信息。游戏数据的产生和储存只是这个战争的一般。Zynga还必须有俩个分析团队（数据分析、可视化）来处理数据，在数据的基础上给出商务改进建议。 促进社会化游戏的经济性有三个关键指标：流失率、口碑传播系数、每个用户所带来的收入。流失率是指游戏玩家的的流失率。社会化游戏的流失率很高，平均而言，每月可以高达50%。这意味着今天注册的用户在一个月后只有一半人会继续。传播系数是衡量现有游戏玩家能够吸引新客户的有效性，这是社会化网络平台的一个重要能力。具体来讲，如果在一个月内，有100个FarmVille的玩家能够带来5个新的玩家，那么传播系数为1.05。用户收益是一个游戏玩家在整个生命周期所能够产生的预期收益，它是在每个用户的月收益和流失率的基础上计算。例如，如果每个用户的月均收益为5美元，流失率为50%，那么他的预期收益为5元第一个月 + 2.5元第二个月 + 1.25元第二个月等等依次类推，总共为10美元。 第一波Facebook上的社会化游戏关注提高传播系数，他们通过游戏玩家在游戏时的墙张贴广告来提高传播系数。但这样的做法产生了太多的“墙垃圾链接”或者游戏相关的帖子，使得用户很难看到他朋友推荐推荐过来的墙贴。为此，Facebook以及其他社会化网络平台严令要求游戏公司减少他们的墙贴。 为此，Zynga转向了社交图谱分析（social graph analysis）。对于社会化游戏，社交图谱，或者说朋友之间的关系，和社交网络平台有一些不同。例如，Zynga的Mafia Wars游戏，玩家可能有两类朋友：一类是对这个游戏很积极，另一类是对该游戏相对消极，只是为了朋友而加入到这个游戏，很少玩这个游戏或者很快就离开了这个游戏。玩家和这两类朋友的互动方式也不一定一样，例如积极分子朋友圈中礼物和提供帮助更多些。指导玩家对不同朋友采用不同的沟通方式，提高了收益降低了流失率。类似Zynga的社会化游戏公司必须从各个方面提升玩家体验才能提高游戏的利润。 来自于Vertica Systems（一家数据库管理公司）的技术能够解决这个问题。Vertica的大规模并行处理（massively...
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...Restatement of the Company Zynga is a social gaming company. Many of their games are seen on social media networks such as Facebook, or Google+. On August 11, 2011, Zynga restated their first quarter revenue to reflect an accounting error in their initial IPO (initial public offering) registration. Their second quarter revenue report was increased by 3% over what was reported in first quarter. The error was due to a previous policy estimate (Primack, August, 2011). Accounting Principles Involved In the first quarter, the company’s previous policy was to apply most current estimates of paying players to current period sales. The accounting department did not adjust the deferred revenue balance for revised estimates of related sales in previous periods. Zynga determined the adjustment of the deferred revenue ending balance was necessary according to ASC 250. March 31, 2011 financial statements were restated because Zynga found they had an internal control material weakness of financial reporting for the first quarter (Primack, August, 2011). Effects of Errors and Changes on Statements The effect of the error/change on the restatement was to increase revenue by $7.5 million, as well as an increase to a provision of income taxes by $2.5 million for January, February, and March 2011. In addition, Zynga decreased deferred revenue by $7.5 million as of the end of March 2011 (Primack, August, 2011). Stockholders The shareholders involved in Zynga include: o Kleiner Perkins Caufield...
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...Digital gaming is hot, and financial rewards, for the company that can conquer this market, are vast. Currently, Zynga is considered by many to have “, won the gaming race…with its roughly 230 million monthly players,” and is poised for an “, initial public offering valuation that could reach 20 billion.” Meanwhile, the cash continues to pour in, but investors worry about the source of those funds which is limited to a minute percentage of players, purported to be less”, than 10 percent.” of those actually playing. An analysis of this industry’s components using Porter’s Six Forces sheds light on the likelihood of Zynga’s continued success following what is “, sure to be a blockbuster initial public offering.” Threat of Entry: Threat of entry in this industry is huge, largely due the low cost to developers and the huge interest from venture capital firms. Tech startups have but to look and the funding availability is nearly limitless as “Firms such as Union Square Ventures, O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and XG Ventures are devoting an increasing amount of time and money to financing wireless apps.” And it’s not just start-ups looking to get in on the action “, Yahoo wants to be the company that brings apps to the wider world,” with the revenues being realized; there is increasing interest from the well established companies to get involved with the research and development of social gaming apps. At present the “,torrid growth has attracted money…,Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield &Byers…...
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...23rd May 2013 Assignment submitted to GROUP II ASSESSMENT OF LINKAGE BETWEEN STRUCTURE & PERFORMANCE Group Members Sonal Zade Jayeeta D’Souza Bipul Sharma Rohit Kedare Rajneesh Malik Nitin Amin – Roll No. 32 – Roll No. 08 – Roll No. 02 – Roll No. 26 – Roll No. 20 – Roll No. 14 – IBM – Capita – HUL – H J Heinz – Zynga – WNS 1. Introduction 2. Case on Formation of Autonomous Work Groups at Hindustan Unilever Limited 3. Case on Adaptability, Discipline & Innovation in Structure at H J Heinz Company 4. Case on Job Architecture and Performance at WNS Global Services 5. Case on Impact of structural change and Ventura grades at Capita India 6. Case on structural linkage with performance at Zynga (Online Gaming) 7. Case on matrix structure linkage with performance at IBM 3 3 5 8 11 13 16 Page 2 of 18 Introduction We have undertaken studies in our companies to understand the correlation between structure and performance. We have made an attempt to disintegrate the level of complexity in the structures and what impact it exercises on the output or performance. We have explored the above subject keeping in mind that the important variables while dealing with organisation structure are – formalization (rules, routines), centralization (hierarchy, use of authority, verticality), control systems (span of control), coupling and structural embeddedness and specialization (role clarity). Case 1 - The Hindustan Unilever Experience By the end of year 2010, Hindustan...
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...plus increase (this too followed a last minute decision to raise the initial offering price from around $35 to $45). The stock traded as high as $122.70 and is currently trading slightly above $94, putting the current market value of the stock close to $9 billion. Pandora, an internet radio station, recently increased their offering price just prior to its’ recent IPO which had a $2.8 billion market value at end of the first trading day. This while Pandora is unprofitable and may be for some time. For this week’s discussion, I’d like to also reference this weekend’l r s WSJ article “Virtual Farms, Rich Harvest” discussing how the next firm up, “ Zynga, a company that sells imaginary tractors and other make believe goods in online games, plans to raise some very real money from public investors” (Winfield & Cowan, 2011). Zynga is seeking about $20 billion from the offering. Many believe that other social networking sites, like Twitter and Facebook, are contemplating raising capital through issuing common stock and are scrutinizing these IPOs to help gauge how the market may respond to their IPO’s . It will be interesting to see how the next few months go for LinkedIn and these other firms that have since followed, as some analysts believe the stocks are way overvalued and major declines are down the road. For example, “a tech and media specialist for Hoover, an IPO research firm thinks LinkedIn has that first mover advantage of being the first of its kind to come public...
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...2013, and is forecasted to increase. Figure 2 illustrates quarterly revenue growth of 64% over the same quarter last year, and 70% increase of the same trailing nine months from 2013. A loyalty analysis suggests Social Ads can generate new growth in revenue while keeping the acquisition costs relatively low. Figure 3 depicts FB’s increase in Enterprise Value (EV) and EV/EBITDA multiple in recent years. The rising third quarter EV for 2014 also underlines the success in monetizing their Social Ads in the mobile space. The Facebook Platform and Facebook for Web sites. Developed in 2007, Facebook Platforms enables third-party developers to develop applications within the Facebook environment. Figure 4 shows how third-parties like Zynga can access user data through applications, which helps to acquire new users while retaining old ones at no cost.[3] Aside from some criticism over privacy concerns, the application boom and popularity of social gaming led to unsurpassed growth in the industry. Further fueling growth was Zynga’s Farmville, which could attract up to 45 Million users per day and ultimately paved the way for their own IPO and $90 Million...
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