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Technology Stocks : Zynga, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Glenn Petersen who wrote (101)	12/15/2011 6:40:00 PM
From: stockman_scott	1 Recommendation Respond to of 365

Zynga Looks To Be Home Run In Venture Game http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/12/15/zynga-looks-to-be-home-run-in-venture-game/?mod=google_news_blog December 15, 2011, 5:24 PM ET By Russ Garland Foundry Group is a small venture firm in Boulder, Colo., that raised a $225 million debut fund in 2007 and invested $1.6 million of it in a gaming company called Zynga. Zynga plans to go public tomorrow at $10 per share, the upper end of its pricing range, and if it at least holds that value until Foundry can exit, that investment will return $368 million to the firm and its limited partners. That’s a grand slam in the venture business. The story is similar for Zynga’s other early investors, Avalon Ventures and Union Square Ventures. The company’s later investors, who include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Institutional Venture Partners also stand to make a bundle. Kleiner Perkins, the largest shareholder after Chief Executive Mark Pincus, will own an 11.6% stake after the IPO worth about $652 million at $10 a share. The firm, which has far more capital under management than Zynga’s early investors, put a total of $35.4 million into the company. Even Google stands to make out. Like all Zynga’s venture investors save Kleiner Perkins, Google plans to sell shares tomorrow and could pocket nearly $17 million, leaving it with a 3.8% stake in the company worth around $216 million. Foundry Group will walk away with $25 million if it sells all the shares it is offering as part of the IPO. Avalon stands to make about the same and Union Square could take home about $22 million. Avalon’s remaining stake would be worth about $322 million; Union Square’s, $285 million; and Foundry’s, $321 million. Those three venture firms, along with Kleiner Perkins and IVP, have already taken some money off the table through share repurchases by Zynga earlier this year. IVP, which put $12.6 million into Zynga, could score nearly $25 million in the offering, leaving it with a stake worth $318 million. And what about Pincus? He’s not selling any stock in the IPO, having already reaped $109.5 million in a stock buyback last March. After the IPO, his stake in the company, including his Class C shares, which have super voting rights, will be worth a cool $1.1 billion. Of course if the stock performs well, all these numbers will rise. When Zynga filed to go public in July, it was hoping for a value of $20 billion, more than twice what it’s currently worth.