Monday saw a huge 14% rise in Zynga shares just ahead of the release of quarterly figures. The games development company that we all know and love will release the results on Monday 4th of February and investors are confident that the company that gave us Farmville and Mafia Wars will provide solid numbers. So confident in fact that shares went up 35 cents to $2.84, and the announcement of the $200 million share buyback plan and partnership with Bwin for the real money project in the UK will also have helped some. Arvind Bhatia, analyst at Sterne Agee noted that many tech companies stock was on the rise without any real news to back up the changes in price. Regarding Zynga he said, "Volume is three times the normal volume and stock is up 13 percent and that's clearly telling you somebody's buying." Michael Pachter from Wedbush Securities pointed out "They scheduled an earnings call for next Tuesday and haven't pre-announced, so perhaps investors are feeling good about the quarter." Zynga has shifted it's focus of late into mobile and real money gaming with the confirmation of its UK websites coming earlier this month. Once famed for its partnership with Facebook, providing many Social Games, it has now distanced itself slightly and the deal with Bwin takes Zynga into the real money market. In fact it has cut many of its poor performing games such as Petville and Fishville. They are still going through changes and have axed 5% of staff so far and are considering the closure of the Boston office as well as the Japanese office. It's great to see Zyngas' shares on the rise and the investor confidence in a company that is in a transitional period. There must be confidence in its real money venture and without the platform that Facebook has provided for it to launch its games it will be interesting to see how things pan out.
