5 Stocks to Invest In According to Bart Baum’s Ionic Capital

3. Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ:ZNGA)

Ionic Capital Stake Value: $18,094,000
Percentage of Ionic Capital’s 13F Portfolio: 2.3%
Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 47

Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ:ZNGA) is a company that specializes in social gaming. It creates, promotes, and manages live social games for mobile platforms including Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, and social networking sites like Facebook.

Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ:ZNGA) posted earnings for the fourth quarter on February 9, reporting a loss per share of $0.06, missing market estimates by $0.01. However, average mobile monthly active users (MAUs) increased by 38% year-over-year to 184 million.

At the end of the fourth quarter of 2021, 47 hedge funds in the database of Insider Monkey held stakes worth $540.49 million in Zynga Inc. (NASDAQ:ZNGA), down from 52 in the previous quarter valued at $603.90 million.

In its fourth quarter 2020 investor letter, Artisan Partners Limited Partnership 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.”