Facebook's stock is set to begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market on Friday, the day after the world's definitive online social network raised $16 billion in an initial public offering that valued the company at $104 billion. That's more than Amazon.com and other well-known companies such as Kraft, Walt Disney and McDonald's.
It's a big windfall for a company that began eight years ago with no way to make money.
Facebook priced its IPO at $38 per share on Thursday, at the top of expectations. Now, regular investors will have a chance to buy stock in Facebook for the first time. The stock will trade under ticker symbol will be FB.
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Facebook's offering is the culmination of a year's worth of Internet IPOs that began last May with LinkedIn Corp. Since then, a steady stream of startups focused on the social side of the Web has gone public, with varying degrees of success. It all led up to Facebook, the company that's come to define social networking by getting 900 million people around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts.
It has done so while managing to become one of the few profitable Internet companies to go public recently. It had net income of $205 million in the first three months of 2012, on revenue of $1.06 billion. In all of 2011, it earned $1 billion, up from $606 million a year earlier. That's a far cry from 2007, when it posted a net loss of $138 million and revenue of $153 million.
"They could have gone public in 2009 at a much lower price," said Nick Einhorn, research analyst at IPO investment advisory firm Renaissance Capital. "They waited as long as they could to go public, so it makes sense that it's a very large offering."
Facebook Inc.'s valuation is the third-highest in an IPO, according to Dealogic, a provider of financial data. Only two Chinese banks, Agricultural Bank of China in 2010 and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in 2006, have been worth more. They were worth $133 billion and $132 billion, respectively. By another measure —the amount raised— Facebook ranks third among U.S. IPOs. The largest was Visa, which raised $17.9 billion in 2008. No. 2 was Enel, a power company, and No. 4 was General Motors, according to Renaissance Capital.
The $38 share price is the price at which the investment banks arranging the offering will sell the stock to their clients. In an IPO, the banks buy the stock first from the company and the early investors and then sell to the public. If extra shares reserved to cover additional demand are sold as part of the transaction, Facebook and its early investors stand to reap as much as $18.4 billion.
For a company that was born in a Harvard dormitory and went on to reimagine online communication, the stock sale means more money to build on the features and services it offers users. It means an infusion of money to hire the best engineers to work at its sprawling Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters, or in New York City, where it opened an engineering office last year.
And it means early investors, who took a chance seeding the young social network with start-up funds six, seven and eight years ago, can reap big rewards. Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist who sits on Facebook's board of directors, invested $500,000 in the company in 2004. He's selling nearly 17 million of his shares in the IPO, which means he'll get some $640 million. He will hold on to about 28 million shares, worth $1.06 billion.
The offering values Facebook, whose 2011 revenue was $3.7 billion, at as much as $104 billion. The sky-high valuation has its skeptics, who worry about signs of a slowdown and Facebook's ability to grow in the mobile space when it was created with desktop computers in mind. Rival Google Inc., whose revenue stood at $38 billion last year, has a market capitalization of $207 billion.
"There seems to be somewhat of a hype around the stock offering," says Gartner analyst Brian Blau.
That may be an understatement.
Facebook's IPO dominated media coverage in the weeks and days leading up to the event. CEO Mark Zuckerberg's hoodie made headlines when he wore it to a meeting with investors as did General Motors' decision this week to stop advertising on the site —and rival Ford's affirmation that its Facebook ads have been effective.
There are more than a few reasons for the exuberance. First, there's Facebook's sheer size and high profile. The company grew from a college-only social network to an Internet phenomenon embraced by legions of people, from teenagers to grandmothers to pro-democracy activists in the Middle East.
Secondly, it's personal.
"It's probably one of the first times there has been an IPO where everyone sort of has a stake in the outcome," Blau says. While most Facebook users won't see a penny from the offering, they are all intimately familiar with the company.
And then there's Zuckerberg, who turned 28 on Monday. He has emerged as the latest in a lineage of Silicon Valley prodigies who are alternately hailed for pushing the world in new directions and reviled for overstepping their bounds. He counted the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs among his mentors, and he became one of the world's youngest billionaires — at least on paper — well before Facebook went public. A dramatized and less-than-flattering version of Facebook's founding was the subject of a Hollywood movie that won three Academy Awards last year, propelling Zuckerberg even further into the public spotlight.
Though Zuckerberg is selling about 30 million shares, he will remain Facebook's largest shareholder. Even after the IPO, he will own 503.6 million shares, or 32 percent of Facebook's total shares. At the $38 share price, his stake in the company is worth $19.1 billion. Zuckerberg will control the company with 56 percent of its voting stock as a result of agreements he has with other shareholders who promise to vote his way.
The set-up helps to ensure that he and other executives keep control as the demands of Wall Street for short-term returns exert new pressures on the company.
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True to form, Zuckerberg and Facebook's engineers are ringing in the IPO on their own terms. The company is holding an overnight "hackathon" Thursday, where engineers stay up writing programming code to come up with new features for the site. On Friday morning, Zuckerberg will ring the Nasdaq opening bell from Facebook's headquarters a continent away.
It's Facebook's big day.
The site, which was born in a dorm room eight years ago and has grown into a worldwide network of almost a billion people, is making the most talked-about stock market debut in years.
Here's some of what Associated Press reporters are finding. Check back all day for updates. All times EDT.
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8:54 a.m.
THE RIPPLE EFFECT: CALIFORNIA CASH
Besides minting Internet billionaires, the Facebook IPO should provide a little help for the cash-starved state of California.
The state's nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office says the IPO will generate $1.6 billion to $2.6 billion for the state through the middle of next year as shareholders cash in their stock.
California badly needs the money: Gov. Jerry Brown said over the weekend that the projected state deficit has swelled to $15.7 billion for the coming fiscal year. In January, it was projected at $9.2 billion.
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8:48 a.m.
POP AND DROP
Several of last year's must-have IPO stocks aren't exactly must-haves anymore.
Pandora, an Internet radio company, went public June 15 at $20 a share. You could have bought the stock during the day for $26. It's now trading under $11.
Groupon, the online daily deal company, priced its stock at $20 a share on Nov. 4. It traded above $31 the first day and is now under $13.
And LinkedIn, a social network for professionals, more than doubled from its $45 offer price within minutes of hitting the market last May 19. It reached $122.70 on the first day before closing at $94.25. It's back to about $105.
— Dave Carpenter, Personal Finance Writer
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8:41 a.m.
THE KID BILLIONAIRE
CEO Mark Zuckerberg is selling about 30 million shares of Facebook as part of the initial public offering. At $38 each, he pockets $1.15 billion. He will remain Facebook's largest shareholder, will more than 32 percent of Facebook's total shares. At the $38 share price, his stake in the company is worth $19.1 billion.
Zuckerberg will control the company with 56 percent of its voting stock as a result of agreements he has with other shareholders who promise to vote his way.
Here's his bio:
AGE: 28. Born May 14, 1984.
RESIDENCE: Palo Alto, Calif. Grew up in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
EDUCATION: Philips Exeter Academy, class of 2002. Studied computer science at Harvard University before dropping out.
PROFESSIONAL CAREER: Co-founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004. Has served as CEO since.
FAMILY: Mother, Karen; father, Edward; sisters Arielle, Donna and Randi Zuckerberg.
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8:30 a.m.
NEXT STOP: 1 BILLION
Have a look at how explosively Facebook has grown. According to the company, this is when the site passed milestones for its number of active users, defined as someone who logs on at least once a month:
1 million — End of 2004.
5.5 million — End of 2005.
12 million — End of 2006.
20 million — April 2007.
50 million — October 2007.
100 million — August 2008.
150 million — January 2009.
175 million — February 2009.
200 million — April 2009.
250 million — July 2009.
300 million — September 2009.
350 million — End of 2009.
400 million — February 2010.
500 million — July 2010.
608 million — End of 2010.
750 million — July 2011.
800 million — September 2011.
845 million — End of 2011.
901 million — March 2012.
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HEDGE FUND VIEW: HE'S IN
Andrew Schneider, a hedge fund adviser and CEO of San Francisco-based Schneider Family Office, was busy selling shares of Apple and LinkedIn on Thursday to free up cash for buying Facebook.
He planned to spend at least $20 million, or 8 percent of his firm's liquid assets.
"You've got 900 million users, and you've got real solid revenue, and the company is earning money," Schneider says.
He's not concerned about plowing such a large proportion into one company: "We feel very strongly and very comfortably about this." Nor is he rattled by General Motors' announcement that it would stop buying display ads on Facebook. He calls that "a very, very small amount."
Schneider points out that there were naysayers when Google went public in 2004, priced at $85 a share. It closed Thursday at $630.
"A lot of people went on the short side of Google when it opened," says Schneider, who is also CEO of Global Hedge Fund Advisors. "And boy, were they wrong."
—Christina Rexrode, AP Business Writer
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HEDGE FUND VIEW: STEERING CLEAR
Whitney Tilson says his hedge fund, T2 Partners, avoids newly public companies as a rule because companies tend to go public only when things are going well.
T2 Partners prefers to look for battered stocks that it can scoop up cheaply. It bought more stock in JCPenney this week. Tilson admits, though, that avoiding initial public offerings doesn't always work. Google, he says, "turned out to be a great deal."
Tilson said he expects Facebook's stock will rise over the long term. Facebook, he says, "does look and smell a lot like Google."
— Christina Rexrode, AP Business Writer
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INSTEAD OF A RED CARPET, RED INK
Facebook isn't getting much of a welcome to the neighborhood.
Thursday was one of the worst days of the year for stocks. The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 156 points and has fallen 11 of the past 12 days, mostly because investors are nervous about turmoil in debt-burdened Greece.
The Nasdaq composite, representing the stock exchange where Facebook will trade, fell 2 percent on Thursday. The composite was up almost 20 percent for the year at the end of March, but that gain has withered to 8 percent.
— Erin McClam, Financial Markets Editor
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