Facebook IPO Official: Facebook Goes Public, Raise is $5B and We’re Off

by Gina Smith
2 min read

Creating 1,000 more Slicon Valley millionaires in high-end cars, Facebook officially now is a public company. It just issued its Initial Pubic Offering on Wall Street. Its S-1 says the IPO is a $5 billion raise, half what analysts expected late last night.. An $80B valuation for the Silicon Valley social networking giant is likely. Stay tuned. S1 doc here in this story, plus figures and an explanatory infographic of Facebook’s numbers. UPDATED

(BREAKING) UPDATED 1:58 p.m. NEW YORK: It’s official. Facebook now is a publicly traded company — its raise, we learned minutes ago, will be $5B.

In its S-1 SEC filing, released and included for download below, no valuation has yet been set.

That leads this reporter to believe the company is still sorting out the size of the offering share-wise. Originally a $10B raise was expected — cutting the number of shares is an occasional tactic for getting a quick price hike on entering the market IPO day.

We’ll know soon, but this could well be the biggest ever IPO for a tech company. It will be right up there, at any rate.

Again, the raise is $5B, which many analyists expect to pop up. Facebook’s SEC S-1 filing does not include an official listing, as you read below. Stay tuned. An $80B valuation is widely expected on the street.

According to its filing, the new public company has $1.8 billion in operating income, $1 billion net income, exactly 483 million active daily users out of 825 million total, internationally.

Now, some observers are objecting that Facebook is overpriced — it’s valued at a some 100 times earnings. That’s one heck of a price/earnings ratio. That’s extraordinary and huge compared to even such companies as Apple and Amazon. Can Facebook meet expectations?

facebook ipo

Today is, probably not accidentally, the eighth anniversary of Facebook’s founding.

Per SEC regulations, new public companies must set expectations. Here’s what the filing says:

Historically our user growth has been a primary driver of growth in our revenue. Our user growth and revenue growth rates will inevitably slow as we achieve higher market penetration rates … as our revenue increases to higher levels … and as we experience increased competition

Here’s the S-1 Facebook filing with the SEC. This seals the deal. Meet FB, the publicly-traded US Company, as seen by the Securities and Exchange (SEC) commission.

FacebookInc-20120201-S1-0

Here’s what Facebook’s business and revenue looked like just before the company officially went public moments ago.


Graphic Courtesy: Statista

groovyPost.comeditor-in-chiefBrian Burgess Contributed to this story about the Facebook IPO.

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