Zynga will reportedly go public on Nov. 17, just one week before Thanksgiving. The company will attempt to raise $1 billion before then.
Zynga will reportedly go public on Nov. 17, just one week before Thanksgiving. The company will attempt to raise $1 billion before then. Courtesy: zynga.com

Zynga will reportedly hold its initial public offering on the week beginning Nov. 17, which comes just a week before Thanksgiving. Company representatives did not respond to initial inquiry, although Reuters confirms this date.

The San Francisco-based social gaming developer had originally planned its IPO for September, and hoped to raise $1 billion to achieve a valuation between $10 billion and $20 billion. The company has proven to be quite profitable, making $90.6 million in profit in 2010 and $11.8 million in the first three months of 2011, but the company decided to delay its IPO due to a tumultuous stock market. In fact, a record number of companies decided to delay their own IPOs when Zynga did in August, after Standard & Poor's downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA.

In its initial filing with the SEC, Zynga revealed that 60 million daily active users spend a total of two billion minutes per day playing its various games, including popular titles like FarmVille, CityVille and Words with Friends. In addition, the company boasts more than 269 million monthly active users on Facebook, the platform within which its earliest games achieved immense popularity.

Most of all, Zynga owes its financial success to the freemium model, in which games are free to play but users can opt to pay real money for virtual items or upgrades within the game. The company says it relies on this small percentage of our players for nearly all of our revenue. However, Zynga has also scored advertising deals with companies like Starbucks, which paid to place virtual Starbucks franchises within the CityVille game.

Other social media companies also plan to go public soon. Groupon recently revised its S-1 filing with the SEC and is aiming for a November release, while Facebook expects to hold the mother of all IPOs in 2012. Already, early rumors speculate Mark Zuckerberg's social network, the most dominant in the world, will raise more than a whopping $100 billion for its initial public offering.

Zynga currently employs approximately 2,543 employees worldwide.

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