Facebook IPO watch: According to Bloomberg News, Facebook announced that it will formally carry out the IPO (initial public offering) at an estimated IPO price range of $28-$35. The valuation of the company reaches $77 million -$96 million. The Facebook IPO will generate proceeds of up to $13.6 billion.
Facebook said in the regulatory filing submitted to the regulatory agency, it will offer 337.4 million shares of common stock. The company was established in 2004 by its 27-year-old founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook has over 900 million users worldwide; over the past four years, its revenues have increased by 24 times.
Facebook said in the amended filing the company itself will offer 180 million shares of common stock, and the selling shareholders including Accel Partners and Digital Sky Technologies (DST) will offer an additional 157.4 million shares of common stock in this public offering. Zuckerberg will sell 30.20 million shares out of the 533.8 million shares held by him. The majority of the net proceeds received by Zuckerberg from the sales of the common shares in the Facebook IPO will be used to pay taxes on the exercise of stock options.
Facebook IPO registration statement was submitted on February 1, 2012 with the predicted financing scale of $5 billion. The registration statement showed that the co-founder Zuckerberg is the company’s largest shareholder. Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs Group IPO are working as the lead underwriters for the Facebook IPO. Facebook has applied to trade its common shares on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the ticker symbol “FB.”
Facebook IPO scale will exceed the Google IPO in 2004, and Facebook will become the the Internet company with the largest valuation. Google is also the biggest rival in the online advertising field of Facebook. Google went public in the year when Zuckerberg founded Facebook, the former raised approximately $1.9 billion and its valuation was approximately $23 billion at that time.