Troubled social notworking game maker Zynga has shocked the cocaine nose jobs of Wall Street by actually making money. The company has been dealing with an exodus of customers which would have made Moses proud but something seems to be working.

Yesterday Zynga reported an unexpected fourth-quarter profit by making steep cost cuts and shifting forward deferred revenue. Investors breathed a sigh of relief and the shares in the outfit rose by seven percent to $2.93 in after-hours trade. The company reported fourth-quarter revenue of $311 million, which is unchanged from a year earlier and down from the prior quarter. There also little to report that is positive. The company is still projecting revenue could shrink for a third sequential quarter.

Zynga forecast revenue for the first quarter of 2013 of between $255 million and $265 million, a roughly 20 per cent drop from the same quarter in 2012. But the company also said its weak sales forecast was due to a "light slate" of new games planned for quarter. The company went public in late 2011 at $10 a share. By the end of last year it had fallen to $2.10.