This quote from ever colorful CNBC personality Jim Cramer after King Digital stock began trading on the New York Stock Exchange earlier today should give you a hint:"It's a Stephen King horror story," Cramer said. "It might be Misery, it could be even Cujo."While there are plenty more (and better) puns that could be made from comparing the King IPO to the works of the master of horror, it's clearly not been a good first day for the company best known as the developer of Candy Crush Saga. After pricing its stock at $22.50 a share, King Digital has seen its stock price fall to as low as $19.08 in its first morning of public trading. As I write this, it's currently at $20.06 a share, down 10.8 percent on the day.
Back in September, King was rumored to have taken the first steps towards offering an IPO when by filing an S-1 Form with the SEC (which, it turns out, wasn't true). Today they're taking one of the last. The company announced this morning in a press release that they have "filed a Form F-1 with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission relating to a proposed initial public offering of ordinary shares."This doesn't mean those share are for sale quite yet - or that we even know how many of them there will be or their initial price - but we're closer to finding out. The F-1 provides investors with all of the information they might need before making a decision regarding King stock. You can read the whole thing here.Once the IPO is live, King plans to trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol "KING," and a whole bevvy of business names will be acting as joint book-running managers: J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, MofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital Inc., Deitsche Bank Securities Inc., and RBC Captial Markets, LLC. The first three of these will act as representatives of the underwriters in addition to book-running managers.How the stock will perform once it is live, though, is anybody's guess. Some might be quick to point to the rise and fall of Zynga (ZNGA) as a cautionary tale for investors, but despite their similar nature in some respects (both are providers of free-to-play games, and both were #1 in that market at the time of their filing), the two are incredibly different companies.
Get ready, investors: Candy Crush is coming to Wall Street. The Telegraph are reporting that King has filed the preliminary paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission that will eventually lead to the company's initial public offering.In having filed an S-1 (just as Twitter did earlier this month), King has taken the first steps towards being listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange alongside other heavy hitters in the tech and gaming industry. But as a social gaming giant with seemingly unlimited potential, one called help but remember the rise, IPO, and tumble of the last company to wear that crown: Zynga.I'm not nearly financially savvy enough to weigh in on the how and why of Zynga's sharp stock tumble, but there's no doubt that it's a situation that will be at the top of mind for potential King investors. The companies are different enough that a straight comparison isn't really fair, but still, ZNGA is the undeniable elephant in the room here.
As was widely predicted, Facebook filed for its initial public offering today, with a staggering value of $5 billion. What wasn't expected, though, was just how much of Facebook's revenue came from the platform's biggest game developer.
According to the New York Post, Zynga is delaying its IPO from September to early November, due to "rocky stock markets."Since Zynga released its S1 documents signaling an intent to go public, the market has been volatile and US treasuries were downgraded by S&P. LinkedIn and Pandora successfully went IPO, but their current stock prices are not setting the world on fire. The story behind the headlines, however, is the back-and-forth squabbles reportedly between Zynga and the SEC.
Here comes the gaming IPO's! Just a week after Zynga filed to go IPO, another games company is planning on going public, but from an unexpected place. According to Techcrunch, Korean online gaming giant Nexon is planning on going public soon.