Your mid-bathroom procrasti-habit... Zynga owns it. The Farmville creator is still focused on "casual" mobile games like Words With Friends (it even dropped $100M for a digital card game company). But the eGaming pioneer just put on its Mr. Monopoly Man hat and sold its San Francisco HQ for almost triple what it originally paid.
- 2012: Bought "650 Townsend St." for $228M.
- Yesterday: Sold it for ~$600M.
- Bonus: Zynga can stay in the space... but rent is $833K/month.
Zynga is better at real estate than gaming... The location is near CalTrain for commuters, adjacent to Airbnb's HQ, and close enough to fast casual spots to keep employees happy/vegan. Location. Location. Location. Here's how Zynga's gaming game compares to its real estate game since buying the property in '12:
- Zynga's core gaming business lost $660M over 7 years.
- Zynga's real estate investment turned a $372M profit over the same period.
- Zynga's stock has lost half its value (but is on a tear lately).
- FYI: The sale proceeds are going to straight to HR — It's hiring more engineers and game creators to make Farmville2 happen.
Companies invest just like you do... And sometimes those investments strike gold, making the company's core business not core anymore. We're thinking of these two:
- Yahoo was going nowhere in 2005 when it bought 40% of a small Chinese ecommerce company — That $1B investment in Alibaba was worth $26B in 2014 when 'Baba IPO'd.
- eBay dropped $1.5B for a payment-processor in 2002 — That investment grew so fast it was spun-off into its own company, and now PayPal is worth 4-times as much as its old parent.