Von der Seite: http://blogs.marketwatch.com/thetell/2012/07/12/...groupon-and-zynga/ Did large lock-ups drown Groupon and Zynga? July 12, 2012, 6:04 PM Groupon GRPN +0.74% and Zynga ZNGA -0.80% both set fresh all-time lows on Thursday – and it’s worth asking if the basic principle of supply-and-demand is not playing a part in the sharp selloff the two social media firms have seen of late. Specifically, it’s been about six weeks since both companies saw a large flood of fresh shares become available on the market. These shares were previously restrained by so-called lock-up agreements that typically follow an initial public offering. And while it is common to prevent insiders from cashing out their shares immediately on an IPO, this latest wave of social media debuts has become known for their practice of floating only a small portion of stock in their IPOs with plans to allow insiders to sell a lot more later, either as part of a secondary offering, or on the open market. And a glance at the charts for both Groupon and Zynga indicates that those effects have been felt. Zynga saw about 325 million shares emerge from its post-IPO lockup on May 29. The stock – already well below its IPO price of $10 by that time – has sunk another 27% since then to under the $5 mark. In addition, its average daily volume has surged by 57% when compared with the average for the three-month period prior to the lock-up expiration. At Groupon, the effect has been even more pronounced. About 600 million shares came online on June 1 – ballooning the float by more than 90%. Average daily trades since then have spiked to a little more than 9 million compared with about 3.5 million for the period three-month period, according to FactSet data. Groupon’s shares have slid by 28% since the expiration. While Facebook FB +0.03% has not been punished to nearly the same degree – its shares are down only 19% from its IPO price – it’s possible the social network giant may feel similar pains. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney noted in a report this week that nearly 1.67 billion Facebook shares will emerge from lock-up expirations before the end of the year. Those lockups will open in four phases, the first of which takes place on Aug. 15 and involves about 268 million shares. An eye-popping 1.24 billion shares will become available on Nov. 13. Both stocks got a small bounce-up on Thursday afternoon before the closing bell, so it’s possible that investors believe the correction is over. Groupon has shed 60% from its IPO price, with Zynga down 50% from the same, and both stocks now carry forward price-to-earnings ratios in the mid-to-high teens, which may be seen as far more reasonable than the high multiples they carried into their market debuts. But Zynga has another lock-up of 150 million shares set to expire on Aug. 16, and both companies are coming up on second-quarter reports that may either boost investor confidence – or solidify concerns about their core businesses. -Dan Gallagher |