Zynga hopes to raise $1 billion in IPO

Zynga Inc., the producer of Facebook games such as Farmville, will be setting the price range for its initial public offering at $8.50 to $10 a share, hoping to raise at least $1 billion, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The San Francisco-based Zynga will offer 100 million shares it announced Friday which could bring its value to $7 billion. This would be the biggest IPO offering by a US internet company since Google debuted, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Read more at GlobalPost: Facebook to seak $10 billion IPO in 2012: reports

Although it has been a tumultuous year for the market and a hostile environment for IPO’s, Zynga is a huge stake in its company, unlike most internet establishments this year, The New York Times reported. Start-ups such as Groupon and LinkedIn have sold less than 10 percent of total shares in their IPOs.

Read more at GlobalPost: Groupon: IPO causes a stir

Still, Zynga looks to be moving cautiously with a $7 billion valuation predicted by market analysts earlier this year, The Times reported. Zynga will only reach this value if it sells each share at $10. This would bring its valuation to a smaller amount compared to its shares traded recently on SharePost, a secondary stock exchange used to trade the stock of privately held companies, the Associated Press reported. On SharePost Zynga’s value is at $11.7 billion.

Zynga filed for its IPO in July and in August outside consultants believed the company’s valuation was $14 billion, CNN Money reported.

Read more at GlobalPost: LinkedIn CEO, CFO among those offloading shares in equity sale