Facebook filing lifts Zynga and other recent IPOs

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES

Facebook’s long-awaited IPO filing lifted shares of freshly minted public Internet companies, including recent laggards Zynga and Groupon. But analysts said the halo effect might fade, because some companies basking in Facebook’s glow just aren’t as financially sound as the world’s largest social network.

Zynga Inc. was getting the best ride on Facebook’s coattails Thursday. In afternoon trading, its shares jumped more than 15 percent — for good reason. Almost all of Zynga’s revenue comes from addictive games such as CityVille and Mafia Wars that are played on Facebook. The social network’s initial public offering filing revealed that 12 percent of its $3.7 billion in revenue last year came from Zynga.

Some of that revenue came from the 30 percent “toll” that Facebook takes on in-game purchases; the rest came from ads that Zynga bought on the site.

Baird analyst Colin Sebastian said other Internet companies were justifiably trading higher partly because Facebook reported ad-revenue growth of 69 percent in 2011.

Daily-deals site Groupon Inc. shares rose 7.8 percent to $23.16, while jobs networking site LinkedIn Corp. shares rose 5.7 percent to $76.46, even though their revenues aren’t tied to Facebook.

Online radio service Pandora Media Inc. shares rose 3.2 percent to $13.30, and American depositary shares of Chinese social networking company Renren Inc. jumped 42 cents, or 8.4 percent, to $5.43.