![]() ![]() The timing was odd, as such shifts would ordinarily be made alongside the earnings. The second hit came just days later, when an investor filed a class-action suit accusing Zynga executives of insider trading, saying they knew the company's outlook was going to take a hit when they unloaded hundreds of millions of dollars of stock earlier in the year.įinally, Zynga ended July by demoting chief operating officer John Schappert. Not even the earnings call news that the company was getting into real-money gambling could spark optimism around its financial fortunes. So when Zynga's second financial report since its IPO fell far short of expectations, a sell-off of company stock dropped the price below $3.33, less than one-third of what it initially traded for the previous December. This industry will forgive a lot if you're making money – hello, Activision Blizzard board of directors – but no profit margin means no margin for error. But the sentiment around the company got notably worse starting with a handful of developments in the last week of July.įirst (and, if we're being honest, foremost), the company stumbled financially. It was already in a precarious spot, suffering from a deflating Facebook social gaming bubble and struggling to build up much of a presence in mobile gaming to offset those losses. ![]() Zynga always had its detractors, being a poster child for the social gaming boom that some traditional developers and players found derivative, exploitive, or just plain evil.īut a decade ago, the social gaming giant had become a punching bag for essentially anyone and everyone.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |