5 Best Stocks to Buy for 2022 According to Analysts

2. Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ:ZNGA)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 52

Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ:ZNGA) provides social game services. Record bookings and user growth have propelled the firm to beat earnings estimates for the third quarter and analysts expect the firm to do much of the same in the new year as it develops new games and scales operations.

JPMorgan analyst David Karnovsky has an Overweight rating on Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ:ZNGA) stock with a price target of $10. In a recent investor note, the analyst said that the market was not pricing the growth of the gaming market into Zynga shares over the next few months. 

At the end of the third quarter of 2021, 52 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $603 million in Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ:ZNGA), up from 49 in the previous quarter worth $1 billion.

In its Q4 2020 investor letter, Artisan Partners Limited Partnership, an asset management firm, highlighted a few stocks and Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ:ZNGA) was one of them. Here is what the fund said:

“We also added to our position in Zynga. Our multiyear investment campaign in Zynga has been based on a new management team’s ability to drive steady growth in the company’s base portfolio of games, expand margins, reinvigorate the new game development pipeline and use its strong balance sheet to acquire complementary games and studios. Shares have been pressured in recent quarters, presumably because of investor concerns about the company’s moderating growth rate and Apple’s pending new privacy policy which will make it more difficult for Zynga to both efficiently acquire new players and sell advertising in its games. We believe the company has multiple growth levers it can pull in the periods ahead, including the rollout of new games, acquisitions, further penetration into international markets and entry into new gaming categories, to name a few. Furthermore, our research suggests the Apple privacy policy change is manageable for larger mobile game developers such as Zynga. Given our strong conviction in the profit cycle, we used recent weakness to add to our position.”