Thursday, October 4, 2012

Zynga Takes a $95 Million Hit; Stock Falls to New Low

Zynga‘s stock price fell 19% in after-hours trading — to a new low of $2.27 per share — after the company announced some brutal preliminary financial results for Q3 2012. 

The company also updated its outlook for 2012, lowering its guidance for its projected bookings and adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.For Q3 2012, the company expects to report a net loss of between $90 million and $105 million and and a diluted EPS (earnings per share) between $0.12 and $0.14.As bad as that is what really stuck out to us is that Zynga will be taking an impairment charge between $85 million and $95 million “related to the intangible assets previously acquired in connection with the company’s purchase of OMGPOP.”In other words, the company will be taking an impairment charge for nearly half of the $180 million it paid for the Draw Something creator just six months ago.In a post to the Zynga blog, CEO and founder Mark Pincus addressed the results, writing:“The challenges we faced in our web business in Q2 continued in Q3 and while many of our games achieved plan, we still experienced overall weakness in the invest and express category.” 

That blog post, it turns out, was actually sent to all employees earlier today. Zynga says that its goal is to be “as transparently as possible on the details on the announcement,” which is why they shared the internal note alongside the preliminary results.

No comments:

Post a Comment