Users spending more than $3m per day on Zynga's online games
Stephen Foley
Stephen Foley is Associate Business Editor of The Independent, based in New York. In a decade at the paper, he has covered personal finance, the UK stock market and the pharmaceuticals industry, and been the Business section's share tipster. And since arriving with three suitcases in Manhattan in January 2006, he has witnessed and reported on a great economic boom turning spectacularly to bust. In March 2009, he was named Business and Finance Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards.
New York
Wednesday 15 February 2012
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Zynga, the developer of Facebook distractions such FarmVille and Words with Friends, said that users are now spending more than $3m per day on its addictive games.
The company, which floated on the stock market in the US last year, posted maiden results that surpassed Wall Street estimates, as millions of users spent wildly on "virtual goods" such as cows and sheep for FarmVille and skyscrapers for CityVille.
Some 54 million people play Zynga games every day, and 240 million take part every month, the company revealed. And while most play inside Facebook, more and more are downloading the games for phones, said Mark Pincus, the company's founder and chief executive.
"Zynga set new records in the year in terms of audience size, revenues and bookings," said Mr Pincus, announcing results for 2011. "We also saw great momentum in mobile and advertising and ended the year with a strong pipeline of new games."
Investors have been engaged in a guessing game over Zynga's financial results ever since it floated in December, and its shares have traded in a wide range around their sale price of $10. They have surged this month on revelations that payments to Facebook, which takes a cut of in-game sales, now account for 12 per cent of the social network's revenues.
In the final three months of last year, Zynga revenues were $311m, 59 per cent higher than the same period in 2010. The company recorded a quarterly loss of $435m because of the cost of stock-based compensation for employees. Zynga shares were $13.50 last night.
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