Facebook IPO watch.

[busydude]

Social media giant Facebook will probably file papers with the Securities Exchange Commission for an initial public offering this week, according to anonymous sources.

The Wall Street Journal cited "people familiar with the matter," a familiar term in financial journalism that likely indicates sources within either Facebook itself or in Morgan Stanley ( MS ). The Journal reported that the New York investment bank will probably act as 'lead left' on the IPO , occupying the eponymous upper-left hand spot on the prospectus.

Facebook's IPO remains the most eagerly awaited filing of the past several years; early estimates suggest that the social network could raise around $10 billion in the event, giving the company a potential value of up to $100 billion. Google, for comparison, holds a market capitalization of about $188.6 billion.

The IPO comes after several other high-profile social media and web-based firms went public, with investors treating the debuts of LinkedIn ( LNKD ) and Zynga ( ZNGA ) as a kind of dry run for the big filing. LinkedIn has a far smaller - though more closely targeted - user base than Mark Zuckerberg's firm, and its shares haven't performed terribly well since they went public last May, dropping 18.7 percent in that time. However, last month saw a 20 percent increase in the share value of the business -oriented network, pushing the stock to $76.64.

Zynga, which produces the incredibly popular online games Farmville, Cityville, Mafia Wars and Words With Friends, actually has a deep symbiotic relationship with Facebook, the platform for all of its biggest hits. In turn, Zynga chief executive officer Mark Pincus drives a fair amount of traffic to Facebook, though it's safe to say that while the latter could survive without the former, the opposite probably isn't true.

Down on Wall Street, Morgan Stanley executives will surely be crowing if they do get the coveted lead left spot over rival Goldman Sachs ( GS ), the firm many assumed would take charge of this offering. However, Lloyd Blankfein's company will likely play a role alongside James Gorman's - with a $10 billion offering, most of Wall Street will get a slice of the IPO pie.

The most serious question facing Zuckerberg & Co. is how much growth remains for Facebook, and what form that growth will take. Compared to one of its biggest peers, Google ( GOOG ), Facebook's filing will take place somewhat later in the corporate life cycle. Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google in 1998, taking the company public six years later in 2004 - well after the collapse of the dot-com bubble - with Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse ( CS ) as underwriters in a "Dutch auction." Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook eight years ago, and the network is far more famous - and its IPO far more widely anticipated - than Google was at the time of its own offering.

With appetites running high for the biggest name in social media to go public, bullish spirits could push the IPO to an extremely high valuation. In turn, investors might see a sharp day-one drop if many choose to cash out quickly. While Facebook definitely represents one of the great success stories of the Web 2.0 economy , a quick rush into the stock should end up creating more than a few cases of buyer's remorse.

While Zynga's filing is different in a number of key ways, its first-day pop offers an object lesson for cautious investors. The gaming company went public at $10 per share, spiked early in the day and then dropped off to below its initial price. It took the better part of two months to recover - so those who got in on the IPO and sold quickly made their cut, while retail investors buying on the first day after the IPO definitely got burned.

Facebook should be a major player on the web and in the stock market for a long time. The tough question is when the best time to buy in will come - or whether that time has already passed.

As of Sunday, it's not known whether Facebook will list on NASDAQ or the NYSE , or what its ticker symbol will be (although BOOK would be nice and simple).

Read more: http://community.nasdaq.com/News/20...stment-bank.aspx?storyid=117303#ixzz1kxZJAwwf

Well, what do you guys think? I will it will do quite well.. considering the company is still growing pretty rapidly.
​

 

[edro]

Everyone and their brother will invest in this so they don't miss the train.
They have missed the other recent web IPO successes and this is a "sure win" in their eyes.

Facebook has recently dominated Google+, so it has proven that they are the chosen social network with all the users and data.
I don't see Facebook declining anytime soon.

I do, however, see their IPO as blasting up in value, but it should level off after a few days and stay pretty consistent.

 

[Dominato3r]

$100Billion? Shit.

 

[edro]

What price?

 

[magomago]

can we even take part in that IPO? I thought big investors get to go in first.....leaving the scraps for us

 

[Riverhound777]

My company owns quite a bit of private FB shares, so i'm excited to see how this goes.

 

[rudder]

Put me down for 5 shares.

 

[Corporate Thug]

LinkedIn ( LNKD ) and Zynga ( ZNGA ) have done surprisingly well after many thought that the valuation was way to high at the IPO so I wouldn't summarily dismissed FB @ 100 billion.

 

[ImpulsE69]

What bugs me about this is that the little people are what made them, and the "most" of the little people couldn't invest in them if they wanted to. :thumbsdown:

 

[Wyndru]

can we even take part in that IPO? I thought big investors get to go in first.....leaving the scraps for us

Basically, that's how google's IPO was.

 

[airdata]

What bugs me about this is that the little people are what made them, and the "most" of the little people couldn't invest in them if they wanted to. :thumbsdown:

Facebook users should get some shares for having their information sold to anybody who wants it.

 

[Jeff7]

So if I buy their stock and then try to boost my Friends list to ridiculous levels, and start Liking lots of their advertisers' things, is that insider trading?

Facebook users should get some shares for having their information sold to anybody who wants it.

So the merchandise will then be partial owners of the company that's selling them as merchandise.
I think the stock market's about to divide by zero. If that happens, do I buy, or short sell?:|

 

[DesiPower]

I refuse to invest in seasonal stocks

 

[Miramonti]

Wall street has been trying to seed a $100b price tag for a while now, particularly conspicuous since goldman got in at $50b. I pity the fool....

 

[conehead433]

People aren't on Facebook to buy stuff, they are there to communicate with their family, friends and strangers. FB has probably already maxed out with the number of corporate sponsors on the site. They supposedly have revenue of ~one billion with yearly profits in the few hundred million maybe. At least when they go public all their financial records will become available. They may have already made a mistake by imposing the stupid timeline on all users, whether you want it or not. And FB has become little more than a platform for corporate spam. With their IPO Facebook will immediately become the most over valued company in the world. In a few years FB will be just another Internet bubble that came and went. They need to milk billions out of investors before the end.

 

[DesiPower]

People aren't on Facebook to buy stuff, they are there to communicate with their family, friends and strangers. FB has probably already maxed out with the number of corporate sponsors on the site. They supposedly have revenue of ~one billion with yearly profits in the few hundred million maybe. At least when they go public all their financial records will become available. They may have already made a mistake by imposing the stupid timeline on all users, whether you want it or not. And FB has become little more than a platform for corporate spam. With their IPO Facebook will immediately become the most over valued company in the world. In a few years FB will be just another Internet bubble that came and went. They need to milk billions out of investors before the end.

and then I hear they have to keep growing 20% a year to maintain its value... good luck stock buyers!!!

 

[ponyo]

Basically, that's how google's IPO was.

No it wasn't. Google did Dutch auction IPO. The only big company I know that used it. I've read that underwriters actively discouraged institutional investors from buying shares of Google in hopes the reduced demand would keep the initial prices down. That way they could point at the low price and make it seem like a failure and discourage other companies from using the Dutch auction. Traditional investment banks felt threatened by the Dutch auction IPO.

 

[Capt Caveman]

Status update: Facebook to go public, raise $5B

The documents show, as expected, that Facebook is thriving. The company earned $668 million on revenue of $3.7 billion last year, according to the filing. Both figures nearly doubled from 2010.

 

[Nintendesert]

I'm going to mortgage my house and buy as many shares as I can.

 

[JTsyo]

If you get in on the IPO, you should sell at the end of the day and then buy back in a month or so.

 

[Wyndru]

No it wasn't. Google did Dutch auction IPO. The only big company I know that used it. I've read that underwriters actively discouraged institutional investors from buying shares of Google in hopes the reduced demand would keep the initial prices down. That way they could point at the low price and make it seem like a failure and discourage other companies from using the Dutch auction. Traditional investment banks felt threatened by the Dutch auction IPO.

Yup you are right. I'm not sure why I thought it was a vanilla IPO. I remember a friend telling me he had a really tough time getting it at the IPO price for some reason, I think he waited a few weeks before he bought and it was much higher at that point. I ended up just getting a piece of it through a mutual fund that I was in.

 

[j&j]

People aren't on Facebook to buy stuff, they are there to communicate with their family, friends and strangers. FB has probably already maxed out with the number of corporate sponsors on the site. They supposedly have revenue of ~one billion with yearly profits in the few hundred million maybe. At least when they go public all their financial records will become available. They may have already made a mistake by imposing the stupid timeline on all users, whether you want it or not. And FB has become little more than a platform for corporate spam. With their IPO Facebook will immediately become the most over valued company in the world. In a few years FB will be just another Internet bubble that came and went. They need to milk billions out of investors before the end.

well, you clearly have no fucking clue how facebook's business model works. They also made about a billion in profit last year.

 

[edro]

They filed yesterday, so when does it go live?

 

[SandEagle]

everyone is aware that government is watching them on facebook. people are leaving it in droves. what better time to go public? make a ton of money before the site fizzles into obscurity. one last looting before its done.

 

[JTsyo]

They filed yesterday, so when does it go live?

Some time in May I hear.