Report: Facebook Filing $5B IPO on Wednesday
Facebook is expected to file for an initial public offering of stock tomorrow, but will only generate $5 billion.
The International Financing Review reports that social network Facebook is expected to file documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering (IPO) of sock that is expected to generate only $5 billion, not the previously reported $10 billion. This likely means that Facebook intends to start with a conservative base before deciding to increase its offering due to investor demand.
The report states that Facebook has finally chosen investment bank Morgan Stanley as the head underwriter for its IPO, followed by Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and JP Morgan as the secondary writers. Unnamed sources close to the matter claim that the list of bookrunners could grow although an estimated timeframe was not given.
On Tuesday investment banking sources pointed out that Facebook has been "unusually guarded" about the process of selecting banks for the underwriting syndicate. They claim Morgan Stanley secured the leading role thanks to its market leading position in Internet IPOs. Facebook's choice also implies that the social website took into account Goldman Sach's handling of a private placement last year, and that it's possible the site simply wants to distance itself from the latter bank.
Facebook will likely finalize the IPO process by May if all goes well in the registration process with the SEC. Final pricing of Facebook shares will probably not be written in stone until at least three months after the IPO papers are filed. Facebook's final valuation will be determined by a variety of factors including investor demand for social media, the health of the European economy and the IPO market.
Facebook's expected valuation remains somewhere between $75 billion and $100 billion, sources claim.
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Hmmmm. I may have to look into buying shares immediately, then selling after a week or so when the craze has died down.
What is the initial Ask price for the shares? Can we buy them before trading hours?
"sock" O_o? maybe i'm behind on Stock lingo.
"Only" $5 billion huh? People need to stop looking at everything in relative terms and get back to earth.
$5,000,000,000 is an insane amount of money in any respect, especially for a site that doesn't offer anything truly useful to the world.
And even if we are looking into relative terms, that would be the fourth largest IPO in US history...
You'd have to be stupid to buy into that bubble. They make very little money and the whole social media thing has grown very very tired. Most of my friends rarely go there anymore and I only visit a few times a year now. I've seen what my old high school friends are doing and no longer care. They've never made a penny off of me, I've never clicked on an AD, I really don't see where there money is coming from.... just stupid advertisers that think people are looking at their ADs and fall into the Facebook scam. Strange that anyone would invest in this bubble.
over price is unhealthy over estimate is how I see FACEBOOK now. I hope I m wrong.
bankrupt in 5yrs ?
You'd have to be stupid to buy into that bubble. They make very little money and the whole social media thing has grown very very tired. Most of my friends rarely go there anymore and I only visit a few times a year now. I've seen what my old high school friends are doing and no longer care. They've never made a penny off of me, I've never clicked on an AD, I really don't see where there money is coming from.... just stupid advertisers that think people are looking at their ADs and fall into the Facebook scam. Strange that anyone would invest in this bubble.
yes, by looking at the media history, I predict it'll go the way of myspace
Yeah pretty sure that's not how their revenue stream works... think it goes more a long the lines of they take all that free personal information and all the crap you "like" and sell that to marketing companies that stockpile it and have a better idea of who you are than any federal entity ever would.
Oh dear, I wonder how they will cope without that extra 5B? Times are hard you know.
F***, I would love to have 0.1% of that.
damn, if i knew this is what they were going to do, i would have gotten money ready, dammit, i miss read things too... 10k tied up in useless stocks when this could explode.
bankrupt in 5yrs ?
I hope so.
For all you non-stock traders, ridiculous websites like Groupon, which is essentially a website connected to servers surrounded by white collar people, are worth 20 dollars a share YET companies that mine/produce/sell thousands of ounces of REAL hard earned gold are worth less than a dollar. RIM is worth less than Groupon -- that is insanely stupid.
Holy cow! That's a lot of socks!
"Only" $5 billion huh? People need to stop looking at everything in relative terms and get back to earth. $5,000,000,000 is an insane amount of money in any respect, especially for a site that doesn't offer anything truly useful to the world.
Agreed.
It's actually 20 times worse than you think, LOL. They actually valued it at $100B. The $5B is not for the whole thing, it's just for 5% of it.
I wouldn't touch that stock with a 10' pole.
Facebook is just a fad, and a fad that can end at anytime.
Toms copy and pasted this from another article with the same "sock" spelling mistake... You'd think they'd have read the comments on the other article. There were far too many sock jokes to not realize the mistake.
FB might be a good stock to pick up immediately (depending on price) and dump a couple of months down the road. I wouldn't stick in for the long haul though as I think that they are just a stepping stone to the next 'big thing'.
5 billion huh?
Sure right now it's riding the high and might wave of popularity which generates awesome advertizing revenue. But lets say tomorrow everyone decideds to use google+ instead. Facebook would only be worth the value of thier physical assets and cash. I highly doubt they have that much in phisical assets and cash combined. The current valuation of facebook being worth something like $130 billion. These valuations are very odd to me and make me think of that tech bubble that popped in the 90's. Basically if tomorrow everyone left facebook they wouldn't be left with $130 billion dollar business. Which makes me think that the value is also based on possible future income. That kind of accounting is what put us in this mess in the first place.
I don't have a Face-Hooker account (yet..dreading the day). I'm really trying hard to keep from signing up. Alas, if I want to take photography seriously, I'll have to have one for better exposure.
I used to have Mice-Face, but I haven't even logged onto that account for over 4+ years now. And when I did use it, I only had my pets on it. I had over 700+ contacts that also were pet lovers (dogs, cats, ferrets, horses, snakes, birds, etc.), so it wasn't for mindless "all-about-me" myopic photos and comments. I remember a lot of my friends said: "join Facebook, it's more adults than kids on there"....but there are still kids signing up to FaceBook. Yet, parents still claim MolestSpace and Pedo-Book didn't do enough to protect their children from sickos on there.
It's now wonder both sites merged together recently (Space-Face?), but I suspect in about 5 years that FaceCrook will be usurped by yet another pretentious social-network wannabe. I hope Apple makes one....we'll christen it by calling it " i-Phook"...