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Zynga picks up four more mobile gaming companies
Mobile/social game giant Zynga has made four more acquisitions in mobile gaming, having already picked up quite a few iOS and mobile development companies in the past. This time around, the biggest pickup is a company from Germany named Gamedoctors, makers of the very popular ZombieSmash title. Page44 Studios is the second purchase. They did work on the also very popular mobile version of World of Goo (though Page44 isn't the actual developer of the original game; that's 2D Boy). Hiplogic and Astro Ape Studios are the last two purchases, each with their own libraries of a few mobile titles. Zynga is building up quite a library of mobile developers and their titles, though we're not actually sure why yet. Most of the developers Zynga has acquired haven't actually put many other titles out on the App Store. Presumably all of these developers are working on something, and Zynga will probably use its new acquisitions to expand its social expertise into the mobile space as well, but the company's strategy hasn't become clear. Stockholders are waiting on that strategy. The company had its IPO late last year at $10, but since then the stock has foundered and sits at just below $9. If Zynga wants to get that stock price rolling, Wall Street will want to see some action out of all of this spending.
Zynga stock falters, holds on first day of trading
Zynga stock finally roared out of the gate and on to the trading floor yesterday at $10 a share, but investors weren't hugely impressed with the social gaming company. The stock started up a dollar at $11, and then dropped back down two, and then thirty, and then fifty cents during the day, leveling off at $9.50, which Forbes says was thanks mostly to "a stabilizing bid by Zynga's underwriters," which means Zynga's investors stepped in and bought up enough stock to keep the price up. So what happened? Shortly put, Zynga's stock wasn't really worth what it was priced out at. An initial public offering is designed to be priced a little low, in order to drum up demand for a company's stock from the public (not to mention raise some money). But Zynga went high and, as a result, didn't quite get the graph it wanted today. They didn't sell the FarmVille, so to speak -- ZNGA will likely be trading fine on Monday (and $9.50 is fine for the highly competitive gaming industry; THQ is sitting down at 75 cents right now). But Zynga's hype phase appears to be over. Now the company needs to prove it can sell more than just cow clickers.
Nexon raises $1.17 billion from IPO, stock subsequently drops
Korean online gaming giant Nexon has raised $1.17 billion from its initial public stock offering. The filing stated that Nexon has 1.2 billion registered players, 77 million of which were active as recently as September 2011. CFO Owen Mahoney says the company's expertise made it an attractive proposition for new shareholders. "We can really bring a lot to the table. We know how to tune a game so that people will play it for months on end," he explained. Nexon's IPO was the largest on the Tokyo Stock Exchange this year, and as a result the company is now valued somewhere between $7.69 billion and $8.97 billion according to GamesIndustry.biz. Even so, Nexon's stock price slipped by 3.9 percent on its first day of trading.
Bob Iger picks up $55,000 in stock for joining Apple's Board
We mentioned earlier this week that Disney CEO Bob Iger was invited to join up to Apple's Board of Directors, and Fortune reports that as part of his deal, Iger got 142 restricted shares of AAPL, totalling a nice bonus of over $55,000 at current market value. Nice work, if you can get it! We joke -- Iger has been a key player at Disney for a while, overseeing both the recent purchase of Marvel Entertainment, as well as the acquisition of Pixar, which of course was headed up by none other than Steve Jobs. $55k is nothing for Iger, though -- last year, he picked up more than $29 million in compensation from Disney, according to SEC filings. And Iger has one other thing going for him that he and I share: He's a Bachelor of Science alumni from the Roy H. Park School of Communications at Ithaca College in upstate New York. Go Bombers!
Nexon's Japanese IPO aims at raising $1.3 billion
When Nexon is finally added to the Tokyo Stock Exchange in December, the company has to be planning a massive "We're in the money!" song-and-dance to celebrate. TechCrunch reports that this will be the biggest IPO in Japan in 2011, with a corporate goal of raising $1.3 billion (100 billion yen) from the listing. The Korean company recently moved its headquarters from Seoul to Tokyo, and is well-known for its popular MMOs such as MapleStory, Mabinogi, and Vindictus. Nexon has over 3,000 people in its employ across the world, and previously said that it is open to purchasing more companies in Japan after the IPO. The company commented on its post-IPO strategy in a brief statement: "As we pursue our strategic objectives, we regularly review our options for accelerating our growth. We have made no decisions or announcements about any specific financing or other plans and cannot comment on rumors." The IPO will be handled by Nomura Securities, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs. Nexon is hoping that the move will raise its market cap to $9 billion, which will make it the biggest online gaming company listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The company is currently worth $7.7 billion.
Gameloft starts trading shares in the US
Gameloft is one of the standout companies on iOS. While the company has received criticism for "borrowing" some gameplay themes and ideas from more popular console titles, there's no question that it has still worked hard on quality games, and picked up a lot of iOS sales for it. Gameloft is based in France, but has announced that it will start trading on the US market by selling American Depositary Receipts, which are a kind of representation of a foreign stock on the American market. The company says that 30% of its sales come from North America, so bringing the chance to invest to the US is probably a good way to pull in some new assets and interest. Not to mention that the offering brings investors a chance to catch a ride on one of the iOS' platforms biggest success stories. Gameloft has been doing really well on the App Store, and this is just another sign that it's headed for even better things in the future. As always, please note that this post is not actual financial advice. Just because the company is doing well, past performance is never a guarantee of future success in any business.
Nintendo shares drop 5 percent following TGS showcase
It seems Japanese investors weren't too thrilled by the presentation Nintendo put together for last night's Tokyo Game Show press conference. Despite revealing a new Mario Tennis, another Monster Hunter title, a firmware update and a different 3DS color, Nintendo's share price dropped to ¥12,290 by the end of trading yesterday -- a five percent day-to-day drop which some investors chalk up to a lineup that doesn't compete with the cheaper offerings of iOS and Android titles. Speaking to Reuters, Ichiyoshi Investment manager Mitsushige Akino said, "Nintendo succeeded by pulling in people who weren't gamers and their needs now are no longer being filled by Nintendo, they are happy playing games on their mobile phones." We suppose Nintendo could combat further losses by making 3DS games cost 99 cents. Whatever they do, they should do it quickly, as Nintendo's stock has fallen 84 percent from its all time high of ¥70,500 in November 2007.
Apple stock performance under Steve Jobs
We can talk about Steve Jobs' legacy as CEO of Apple, look at the products he launched and analyze the earnings statements, but sometimes all you need is a simple picture to summarize it all. As Edible Apple points out, Apple's stock price from when Jobs took the helm in 1997 until now reveals how he has transformed the company from Cupertino.
Zynga delaying stock IPO, due to 'rocky stock markets' and SEC questioning
Zynga was all revved up to release the initial public offering of its stock, but has had to delay that plan due to market instability and to answer questions from the SEC, according to The New York Post. The IPO was planned for next month, but the SEC is looking into how the social games company is reporting both its user numbers and revenue, two factors which would obviously greatly influence a stock's performance. Zynga's also citing "the rocky stock markets" as a factor in the delay, which means the IPO will be pushed back to sometime later this year, possibly in November. Zynga also needed some time to post its performance numbers on all of its friends' walls on Facebook, as well as send out Free Mystery Gifts to everyone on the SEC's ruling board.
Analysts downplay AAPL's dip as Jobs resigns
Apple's stock took a downturn yesterday, as might be expected after the resignation of Steve Jobs. According to WIRED, Apple's stock lost approximately 7.39 percent of its value in after-hours trading. A day later the stock has recovered well; as of this writing the stock price is actually higher than it was earlier in the week, though it still hasn't recovered the full value it lost yesterday. Apple's stock performance doesn't currently reflect the doom n' gloom that many pundits expected following Jobs's departure from his CEO role. Rather than a panicked sell-off, AAPL's performance over the past 24 hours appears to reflect confidence in both new CEO Tim Cook and Apple's future. Financial analysts have noted the drop, but they have said it's of little concern because Jobs's departure has been expected for a long time. A fair amount of financial analysis over the past few years has even suggested that uncertainty surrounding Jobs's health and Apple's CEO succession plan might have been holding the stock performance back. Of course, it's a little dangerous to make broad financial forecasts this soon after Jobs's resignation. Microsoft's stock price barely budged in the days after Bill Gates stepped down, but the stock declined sharply the following year (losing nearly half its value) and has been relatively stagnant since. Hopefully the same thing won't happen to Apple. If you're an investor, please take note that we are not financial analysts ourselves, and we're not offering any financial advice here.
AAPL hits all-time record high
Perhaps because of optimistic analysis going into tomorrow's conference call, Apple's stock price has hit an all-time high today. While the Dow Jones average was down overall, AAPL rose $6 at one point, hitting $371.06 as a high. That's huge -- bigger a stock price than it's ever been before. Analysts say that there are a few factors here, with the big expected earnings only one of them. The HTC patent ruling was another big piece of good news to Apple's investors, and a lot of Apple's moves in general have really been turning out well lately, from the integration of iOS subscriptions and Apple's deals with both media providers and developers, to more recent innovations like iCloud and the new versions of iOS and OS X coming soon. In short, Apple's hitting its stride in a whole new way, and there's still a lot of room to grow yet. Note: Past performance is never an indication of future stock prices. This post should not be considered sound financial advice.
WWDC Interview: iPhorex
Neil Ticktin (Editor-in-Chief, MacTech Magazine and MacNews) interviews Christopher Gnanakone of iPhorex at WWDC 2011. Christopher was kind enough to tell us about their thoughts on the announcements on WWDC, and how it will affect their plans moving forward. TUAW and MacTech Magazine teamed up to speak to developers at WWDC 2011 about the keynote announcements and how Apple's new technologies will help them and their customers. We'll bring you those videos here, MacTech.com and MacNews.com. Also, check out the free trial subscription offer for MacTech Magazine here.
RIM shares hit a five-year low: oh, how the mighty have fallen
There was a time when RIM owned the smartphone space with its revolutionary push email-equipped BlackBerrys. And there are still plenty of folks who can't live without a good physical keyboard and BBM. But, despite the company's $4.9 billion in revenue and $695 million in profits from Q1 2011, RIM's stock has tumbled to its lowest price in five years. What's changed since those heady days when it seemed like there was a Pearl in every pocket? As many of you know, Androids and iPhones have carved out a big chunk of the smartphone market, largely at RIM's expense. Sure, Blackberry 7 OS is coming and the PlayBook is rolling out to help the company gain ground on Android and iOS, but only time will tell if these latest efforts from Waterloo can stem the rising tide of iPhones and little green bots.
Pandora Media offering IPO tomorrow
Music service Pandora is set to introduce its stock to the public tomorrow, becoming one more in a series of social networking and online service companies going with an IPO. Pandora isn't specifically an iOS company, of course, given that its music service runs both through browsers and on a number of platforms. But the company's iOS app has helped its profile. It's consistently stayed one of the top free apps on the App Store. The company's offering 14.7 million shares initially. Pandora's future wasn't ever in actual jeopardy, but certainly the value of the company's app was in question during the lead-up to last week's Apple keynote at WWDC. For a while, iCloud was rumored as being an iTunes streaming service like Pandora, allowing you to listen to your music collection through any iOS device. Those rumors turned out to be untrue so far. iCloud and iTunes Match are only designed to help you sync your iTunes songs across devices, not listen to them remotely. For those whose music collections are too big to fit on an iOS device, Pandora is still one of the main ways to listen to extra music. [via Mashable]
Apple's value is more than Microsoft and Intel combined
Apple's market cap is now greater than Microsoft and Intel combined. When the market closed on Friday, Microsoft had a market cap of US$201.59 billion and Intel had a cap of $115.21 billion. Combined, they have a market cap of $316.8 billion which is just below the $317.60 billion of Apple. This may the first time Apple has exceeded the powerful Wintel platform. As MacDailNews points out, no one can forget what Bill Gates said about Steve Jobs in an unpublished 1998 interview conducted by Robert X. Cringely for Vanity Fair. Then the CEO of Microsoft, Gates wondered, "What I can't figure out is why he (Steve Jobs) is even trying (to be the CEO of Apple)? He knows he can't win." At that point, Microsoft was trading at $29 and had a market cap of $250 billion. Apple was down to a lowly $7.25 and had a market cap of $6 billion. Steve Jobs had resumed the helm as CEO of Apple and was looking to turn things around. I'd say he has been successful, wouldn't you?
AAPL's top owners have cashed in some stock recently
Fortune's Apple 2.0 blog has an interesting tidbit about Apple's stock lately. A blogger who calls himself Sammy the Walrus IV has been poking around into AAPL records, and has found out that several of Apple's top shareholders have sold some of the stock recently. There's nothing shocking here (nothing outside of the usual buy and sell on the stock exchange), but the numbers are interesting, with firms like Janus Capital and Capital Research investing back into AAPL for over a billion dollars each. Four of the top 10 holders of Apple shares have sold off some this past quarter, including Goldman Sachs, who got rid of 61% of its shares, and these same top 10 holders basically determine the fate of AAPL, as they own around 25% of the company as a whole. Again, these are all routine sales, and as you can see from the chart above, there's still plenty of AAPL buying going on (and we'll even state the obvious: this post should not be considered financial advice). But it's an interesting overview of some of the core firms and shareholders behind the movements of AAPL lately.
AAPL shares survive rebalancing on Nasdaq today
Last month the stock index Nasdaq announced that it would be rebalancing the weighting of AAPL shares to better reflect the actual number of shares floating on the market. At the time, AAPL accounted for 20.5 percent of the Nasdaq. After the rebalancing today, AAPL now accounts only for 12.5 percent of the Nasdaq. When Nasdaq made the announcement, it issued a warning that the rebalancing might affect AAPL shares in the short term due to fund managers readjusting their holdings. However, it seems that any negative effect on AAPL's share price was negligible. Apple closed down only 1.1 percent today to end at $346.45. Many see AAPL advancing to upwards of $540 a share by January, and some even think Apple will be the world's first trillion dollar company. Disclaimer: The author holds a position in AAPL. TUAW does not provide investment advice; consult an expert before buying or selling equities.
Amar Bose donates majority of Bose Corporation shares to MIT, says thanks for the education
If you haven't heard of Dr. Amar Bose directly, you've surely heard of his eponymous audio equipment company. Late last week, the 81-year old founder and chairman of Bose Corporation announced that he's donating the majority of shares in the privately held company to his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. A member of that college's graduating class of 1951 and its electrical engineering faculty all the way until 2001, Bose felt compelled to give something back and he's opted for the most grandiose of gestures. MIT won't be able to sell its shares in Bose Corp. nor have any say in the way it is run, but it'll receive dividends as and when they're paid out, which will then be reinvested in its research and education programs. In making this perpetual endowment public, Amar Bose took the time to credit Professors Y. W. Lee, Norbert Wiener and Jerome Wiesner as his mentors -- in the image above, you can see him pictured with Lee (left) and Wiener (right) back in 1955. Chalkboards, that's where it all began.
Nasdaq to diminish Apple's portion of the Nasdaq-100
The Wall Street Journal reports that Nasdaq will drop Apple's profile in its Nasdaq-100 stock index, lowering Apple's share from 20.5 percent to around 12.3 percent, more in line with the number of actual Apple shares out there. Apple is one of 81 companies who are seeing their shares lowered by the rebalance, while 19 other companies, including Google and Microsoft, will have their shares increased. The index was last adjusted in this way back in 1998, but back then, Apple obviously wasn't nearly as big a company financially as it is now, so Nasdaq is simply adjusting things to bring shares more in line with the actual market. The changes should take effect on May 2, and Nasdaq does say that it expects some trades to happen as a result of the changes, which may lead to some "instability" in the markets for a short period. But in general, the changes are just to make sure that a huge amount of growth (or failure) on Apple's part doesn't upset the index too much. As always, we are not financial professionals, and any news about AAPL stock should not be taken as financial advice. [via AppleInsider]
Warren Buffett hesitant on Apple, tech companies
Multi-billionaire investor Warren Buffett says he still has no plans to invest in technology companies, including Apple, preferring to stick with companies like Coca-Cola because it is "very easy for me to come to a conclusion as to what it will look like economically in five or 10 years, and it's not easy for me to come to a conclusion about Apple." Buffett's latest comments came at the opening of a new cutting tools factory in Daegu, South Korea, in which his investment company Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has a share. Even though he's a long-time friend of Microsoft founder Bill Gates -- the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation receives around $1.5 billion a year from Buffett -- the 80-year-old investor has never been comfortable with technology companies. He says that, although recent events in Japan mean that technology stocks are depressed and therefore a good buy at the moment, he's sticking with what he knows. In fact, it's only within about the past five years that Apple stocks have out-performed those of Coca-Cola. Hindsight shows that a switch to Apple from Coke five years ago would have made Buffett a much richer man, but with around $50 billion to his name, his foresight seems to work pretty well. While Apple's stock has gone up like a rocket in the past five years, Coca-Cola's has remained fairly stable -- and in the previous five years, Apple's stock was in the doldrums in comparison, and Buffett's choice looked wise. And now, it turns out, even Bill Gates is investing in Coca-Cola via its Mexican bottler Femsa. [Via Electronista]
