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Monday, December 19, 2011

Zynga prices IPO at top end of range (Reuters)

(Reuters) ? Online games maker Zynga Inc is expected to make a strong debut on the Nasdaq stock exchange on Friday after it priced its initial public offering at the top end of a preliminary range but did not increase the size of the $1 billion deal.

Analysts and investors had expected Zynga to raise the price or boost the number of shares it was selling, since demand had seemed strong in recent weeks. The IPO, from the maker of "CityVille" and "FarmVille" games, has been highly anticipated because it is seen as a way for investors to get a slice of Facebook's growth before the social network goes public itself.

Zynga sold 100 million shares of Class A common stock at $10 per share in the IPO, the top end of the $8.50 to $10 indicative range.

In addition, certain of Zynga's stockholders have granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to an additional 15 million shares to cover over-allotments, Zynga said in a statement late on Thursday. Zynga will not receive any proceeds from the sale of shares by the selling stockholders.

Zynga publishes four of the top five games played on Facebook and has more than 200 million monthly users. Facebook, which takes a 30 percent cut of the revenue Zynga makes on its platform, is expected to go public next year.

"They could have easily raised the size and the price. I expect it to trade strongly when it opens," Scott Sweet, an analyst at IPO Boutique, said of Zynga.

The IPO, equivalent to about 11 percent of diluted shares, values Zynga at $8.9 billion. The company had been valued at roughly $14 billion in November, according to an internal estimate in a regulatory filing.

At $1 billion in proceeds, Zynga's IPO would still be the largest from a U.S. Internet company since Google Inc raised $1.9 billion in 2004.

Zynga and the lead underwriters on the deal, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, declined to comment.

Zynga, which is profitable, generates revenue from less than 3 percent of its players, who buy virtual items like trucks and poker chips in its free games.

Others said Zynga wanted to play it safe with the IPO given the volatile financial markets and what happened to another online game company, Nexon, whose shares fell on their first day of trade in Japan this week.

"The market's been pretty tough this past week, so they probably took a more conservative approach," said Dan Niles, chief investment officer of AlphaOne Capital Partners.

Groupon Inc, another closely watched Internet IPO this year, jumped on its first day of trading in November, but slumped below its $20 issue price about three weeks later.

But unlike Groupon, Zynga is profitable. It posted net income of $12 million during the third quarter and is on track to make $1 billion in revenue this year. But profit growth has been lumpy as the company invested in new games.

Greencrest Capital analyst Max Wolff said Zynga's shares on Friday "could easily go to $12 and change," before stabilizing.

CHALLENGES AHEAD

Zynga's near $9 billion valuation is less than videogame maker Activision Blizzard Inc's $13.6 billion market capitalization and higher than Electronic Arts Inc's $6.9 billion, even though they earn much more in revenue.

Zynga is valued at nine times its sales for the last 12 months, while Activision's multiple is three times its 12-month sales, reflecting the growth potential investors see in online social games.

While Zynga's exposure to Facebook could be enticing to some investors, it also poses a major risk. In the future, Zynga will have to show Wall Street that it can diversify and make money from mobile and other new ventures.

Zynga now generates 95 percent of its revenue from Mark Zuckerberg's social network. If Facebook's user growth slows, Zynga's growth is likely to lose momentum as well. Zynga's growth rate of bookings, which is the money it makes upfront when its users buy items, is also slowing, raising concerns among investors.

"It's not a trend that seems to be stabilizing yet. We believe investors will likely question Zynga's premium valuation," said Sterne Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia in a research note.

Another concern analysts have cited is Zynga CEO Mark Pincus' influence over the company. He owns a special class of C shares that carry 70 times more voting power than regular A shares. This is high compared to many other companies. LinkedIn Corp, for example, has a 10-1 voting ratio.

Still, Greencrest Capital's Wolff said investors may look past Pincus' controlling stake because of the company's dominance on Facebook.

"While there are a lot of reasons to be skeptical about the company, including Mr. Pincus' 70 (times) share class voting rights, the bottom line is they have five of the top six games (on Facebook)," he said.

(Reporting By Liana B. Baker in New York and Alistair Barr in San Francisco, Additional reporting by Sinead Carew in New York, Alexei Oreskovic in San Francisco and Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Bernard Orr)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/videogames/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111216/bs_nm/us_zynga

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Monday, December 5, 2011

ESA ends attempt to contact Russian probe (AP)

MOSCOW ? The European Space Agency says it has abandoned efforts to contact a rogue Russian space probe, increasing the likelihood it will plunge to Earth.

The unmanned Phobos-Ground probe was to head to the Mars moon of Phobos on a 2 1/2-year mission to take soil samples and fly them back to Earth.

But the probe became stuck in Earth orbit after its Nov. 9 launch and attempts to send commands that could propel it toward the Mars moon have been unsuccessful.

An ESA statement Friday said that although the agency has halted efforts to contact the probe, it will resume if any changes are reported by the Russian space agency.

Russian deputy space chief Vitaly Davydov said last month that the spacecraft could fall to Earth between late December and late February.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/russia/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_re_eu/eu_russia_mars_mission

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Saturday, December 3, 2011

84-year-old woman: I was strip searched at JFK

By msnbc.com staff and news service reports

An 84-year-old New York grandmother said Saturday she was injured and humiliated when she was strip searched at an airport after she asked to be patted down instead of going through a body scanner.

Lenore Zimmerman said she was whisked away to a private room and made to take off her pants and other clothes after she asked to forgo the screening because she worried it would interfere with her defibrillator. She missed her flight and had to take one two-and-a-half hours later, she said.

?I walk with a walker ? I really look like a terrorist,? she told The New York Daily News. ?I?m tiny. I weigh 110 pounds, 107 without clothes, and I was strip-searched.?

?I was outraged,? said Zimmerman, a retired receptionist.

As she tried to lift a lightweight walker off her lap, she said the metal bars hit her leg, causing blood to flow from her?a gash, the newspaper reported.

?My sock was soaked with blood,? she said. ?I was bleeding like a pig."

But the Transportation Security Administration said in a statement Saturday no strip search was conducted.

"While we regret that the passenger feels she had an unpleasant screening experience, TSA does not include strip searches as part of our security protocols and one was not conducted in this case," the statement read.

Zimmerman was dropped off by her son at Kennedy Airport for a 1 p.m. flight Tuesday to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on JetBlue, she said. She arrived to the ticket counter around 12:20 p.m. and headed for security in a wheelchair, her small, metal walker in her lap.

She's been traveling to Florida for at least a decade and has never had a problem being patted down until now, she said. "I worry about my heart, so I don't want to go through those things," she said referring to the advanced image technology screening machines now in place at the airport.

Private screening
As a result, she said she was taken into the private screening room by one agent and made to strip.

A review of closed-circuit television at the airport showed proper procedures were followed, Jonathan Allen, a TSA spokesman, said in a statement.

"Private screening was requested by the passenger, it was granted and lasted approximately 11 minutes," the statement read. "TSA screening procedures are conducted in a manner designed to treat all passengers with dignity, respect and courtesy and that occurred in this instance."

The private screening was not recorded.

Zimmerman, who spends half the year in Long Beach, N.Y., said she banged her shin during the process and it bled "like a pig," partly because she is on blood-thinning medication. She said an emergency medical technician patched her up, but she was told to see a doctor when she arrived in Florida to make sure the wound didn't get infected. There are no records indicating medical attention was called on her behalf.

"I don't know what triggered this. I don't know why they singled me out," she said.

Her son Bruce Zimmerman said he'd like to see someone fired, and screeners re-trained after his mother's ordeal.

"My mother is a little old woman. She's not disruptive or uncooperative," he said Saturday. "I don't understand how this happened."

He said she's had an increasingly difficult time traveling, especially since her husband died a few years ago. She has two grandchildren, and her older son, a doctor, died in 2007.

Meanwhile, Lenore Zimmerman said she was healing, planned to go to the grocery store on Saturday and take it easy. Weather was about 76 and sunny, and she's not headed back to an airport until April when she returns to New York.

"Thank goodness," she said. "It will give me some time to brace myself for the return flight."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More news and feature stories from msnbc.com:

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/12/03/9191260-84-year-old-woman-i-was-strip-searched-at-jfk

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Romney faces 2 big rivals: Gingrich and Obama (AP)

WASHINGTON ? Suddenly Mitt Romney is fighting a two-front political war.

The Republican presidential contender has skated along for much of the year as GOP challengers surged and faded. But now he faces an unexpected, more serious threat from Newt Gingrich ? just as Barack Obama's team is sharpening its criticism of Romney, whom the president's aides view as his likeliest foe next fall.

With only a month before the Iowa caucuses kick off the nominating fight, Gingrich's rise has forced Romney's campaign to evaluate a new reality: He no longer has the luxury of staying above the Republican primary fray, avoiding tough questions about his own record and hammering Obama at will while essentially ignoring his GOP rivals.

Well aware of the new challenge, Romney has started fighting back against two opponents from opposite ends of the political spectrum ? no easy feat ? while also defending himself from continuing criticism of reversals, equivocations and shifts on a range of issues.

What does he have to say now about Gingrich?

"He's a lifelong politician," Romney declared this week, signaling his intention to go after the former House speaker and long-time Washington insider in hopes of knocking him off course. Romney also is set to air his first television commercials on Friday in Iowa, where polls show Gingrich and Romney locked in a tight race. It's another indication of how seriously Romney is taking the Georgian's rise.

Gingrich sought Thursday to stay above board, telling The Associated Press while campaigning in Iowa, "I'm not going to focus on Romney or anybody else." He made the comment just days after saying in South Carolina that he was "a lot more conservative than Mitt Romney" and added: "It's wrong to go around and adopt radically different positions based on your need of any one election."

Romney also has started subtly contrasting his character with Gingrich's once rocky private life. He said on Fox News that he's a person "who has devoted his life to his family, to his faith, to his country."

At the same time, Romney intends to keep the heat on Obama, convinced that his best chance at clinching the GOP nomination is to persuade Republican primary voters that he's the strongest candidate to take on the Democratic incumbent on their biggest issue, the economy, next fall.

Romney's response was swift when the Democratic National Committee rolled out TV ads this week attacking Romney for flip-flopping on a series of issues, including abortion and health care.

The Republican's team quickly organized conference calls with top supporters in about a dozen states ? a demonstration of organizing power meant to serve as a warning to both Gingrich and Obama.

"They don't want to see me as the nominee, that's for sure," Romney chided in response to the ads. "It shows that they're awfully afraid of facing me in the general election. They want to throw the primary process to anybody but me, but bring it on. We're ready for them."

Obama's aides privately say they see Romney as the Republican most likely to win the party's nomination and they have been flummoxed that no GOP rival has gone after him aggressively. By stepping up the heat, the president's aides hope to bloody Romney so he emerges from the GOP fight as a damaged nominee. Or, in what many Democrats view as a less-likely scenario, the Republicans would pick a candidate who would be weaker in the general election.

Gingrich has advantages of his own, in the primary fight or a general election. He's universally known within the GOP with broad grassroots support, and he has a deep grasp of policy issues.

"Conservatives now have a credible, nationally known alternative in Gingrich," said longtime GOP consultant Rick Wilson, who works in Florida. "That's more of a problem for Romney than some other candidates have posed."

But Gingrich lacks any significant campaign organization after his staff resigned en masse in June. His fundraising dried up, and his campaign is still paying off debts from earlier this year. He also carries personal baggage ? including two divorces and acknowledged infidelity ? that could turn off conservative Republicans in Iowa, where voters will first choose among Romney, Gingrich and their rivals. And he has some political problems, having backed proposals now considered conservative apostasy such as an individual mandate for Americans to buy health insurance.

All that opens the way for Romney to employ a strategy he used as other, more conservative alternatives to him have risen and fallen over the past six months. As in those cases, Romney's campaign expects the media to shine a light on Gingrich's long record. The campaign also has spent much of the year compiling research to criticize rivals who rise to challenge him ? and never stopped plotting for Gingrich despite the former speaker's summer problems.

Romney allies say his campaign started picking up early on Gingrich's surge by noting he was frequently the second choice among Republicans who preferred a different conservative candidate to the former Massachusetts governor.

Either by coincidence or by design, other candidates also have started helping Romney.

Texas Rep. Ron Paul, a libertarian-leaning candidate with a big bank account, rolled out a blistering online video this week ? that may eventually end up on TV ? accusing Gingrich of "serial hypocrisy." The spot showed Gingrich alongside former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democratic boogeyman to Republicans.

But time is not on Romney's side as it was when other rivals ? Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann and businessman Herman Cain among them ? enjoyed bursts of momentum only to fall after missteps.

Until now, Romney's biggest challenge this year had come from Texas Gov. Rick Perry. He entered the race in August, months after signaling he probably would run. That gave Romney's campaign plenty of time to prepare. When Perry immediately rose to the top of polls, Romney castigated him as a career politician, much as he's doing with Gingrich now. If that didn't work, Romney still had four months before the Iowa caucuses to try to take Perry down. It helped that Perry was unknown to much of the primary electorate, so Romney could help define him in voters' minds.

Perry ended up fading without Romney having to seriously engage for much more than week.

But only four weeks remain before the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, and Gingrich, who has risen steadily in polls nationally and in early voting states, already is known nationally. That will make it much more difficult for Romney to define him.

Still, Romney is counting on his superior campaign organization, which is designed to keep him in the race for the long haul by winning significant numbers of key convention delegates even if he loses in a particular state.

As Romney faces more scrutiny in the coming weeks, one of his main challenges will be to keep his well-known defensiveness in check.

For the better part of a year, his campaign has executed a steady strategy vastly different from his reactive, aggressive and unsuccessful 2008 presidential bid. So far, Romney has been able to watch his rivals cut each other down on the debate stage and elsewhere, while he has barely been forced to defend himself. He kept his cool as one conservative rival after another rose to potentially challenge his long-held position as the GOP field's most plausible nominee.

But there are signs that Romney's temper may be rising along with the pressure of waging two political fights.

In a Fox News interview this week, anchor Bret Baier pressed Romney on being on both sides of issues, including climate change, immigration, abortion and gay rights. And Romney appeared irritated, telling Baier: "Your list is just not accurate. So, one, we're going to have to be better informed about my views on issues."

The coming weeks will tell whether Romney can withstand the scrutiny ? and wage two fights at once.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/gop/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111202/ap_on_el_ge/us_romney_two_fronts

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