Zynga Inc., the company behind the most popular Facebook games — "FarmVille," ''CityVille" and "Zynga Poker," to name a few — reported a large net loss for its fourth quarter, weighed down mainly by stock compensation expenses.
Its revenue rose sharply, beating Wall Street's expectations, and its adjusted earnings were stronger than expected. It was Zynga's first quarterly report since it went public in December.
In a conference call Tuesday to discuss the results, CEO Mark Pincus answered an analyst's question about his leadership style that was related to media reports during the company's federally mandated quiet period before it went public. The Wall Street Journal quoted anonymous sources in reporting last November that Pincus was pushing some of the company's early employees to return stock they owned in Zynga. Zynga couldn't respond at the time.
The question has been paraphrased for clarity.
QUESTION: There has been a lot of talk about Mark as a person — and I love Mark. Can you just respond to the views of your management style? There has been a lot of press about it and we would love just your views on who you are and the leadership of your company?
PINCUS: Well, I don't know if I can answer that in one sentence, my view on who I am. I think that we had, you know, a long quiet period, and we are — as a company, if you look back on our track record, as a private company, we pride ourselves on being an open and transparent company both with our employees, with our investors. ...
So it was a difficult period for us, during the quiet period, to be in a place where only competitors and other people who didn't know us well could talk about us. I would say that we're happy to be past that period, and we are very happy to be sharing more with the world about our approach. I think ... whether you read interviews with me or whatever you want ... my values, Zynga's values are on the wall here, and they're on the Web, and if you read those values, that is my management style. So..."
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