Zynga Founder Mark Pincus Steps Down As CEO, Frank Gibeau Named Successor

(RTTNews) - Shares of Zynga Inc. (ZNGA) gained almost 7 percent in extended trades Tuesday after the social games developer said it has appointed Frank Gibeau as chief executive officer, effective March 7, 2016. Gibeau succeeds Mark Pincus, who has stepped down as the company's CEO for a second time.

Pincus, who is also Zynga's founder, will serve as executive chairman of the board, and will also report to the company's board of directors.

Gibeau, who joined Zynga's board of directors in August 2015, is a gaming industry veteran, with 25 years of experience in interactive entertainment. He will report to Zynga's board of directors.

Gibeau, aged 47, has spent more than two decades at Electronic Arts Inc. (EA, ERTS), where he held a number of influential business and product leadership roles.

Most recently he served as the Executive Vice President of EA Mobile from October 2013 to May 2015, where he led strategy, product development and publishing for the company's fast-growing mobile games business.

Zynga has been under pressure as its user base has continued to decline for the past several quarters. Zynga generates majority of its revenues from the virtual-goods purchases made by its online gamers and through ads.

However, the gaming company behind once very popular PC-based games such as "FarmVille" is now struggling, as casual gamers now spend more time on tablets and smartphones.

In April 2015, Pincus returned to the position of Zynga's chief executive officer after Donald Mattrick resigned from that position. Mattrick was the former head of Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Xbox unit.

At that time, Zynga did not disclose any reasons for Mattrick's exit, but said he would quit from the company's board as well.

Under Mattrick, Zynga had appeared to show some semblance of optimism, having acquired the U.K.-based studio NaturalMotion, and drastically cut jobs as well as redesigned games for mobile devices.

But as hard as he tried, Mattrick's efforts to turn around Zynga faltered and its stock price was under constant pressure, forcing analysts to question the company's business model.

ZNGA closed Tuesday's regular trading at $2.16, up $0.05 or 2.37 percent on a volume of 11.47 million shares. In after-hours, the stock further gained $0.15 or 6.94 percent to $2.31.