Facebook To Go Public On Friday, May 18

redletterdave writes "The IPO on everyone's minds for the past few years — and possibly the biggest one in history — is upon us: Facebook will finally make its Wall Street debut on Friday, May 18, 2012. Sources also say Facebook will begin its IPO roadshow on Monday, May 7, and will eventually list its shares on the Nasdaq (not NYSE) with the ticker symbol 'FB.' Facebook looks to raise anywhere from $5 billion to $10 billion during its roadshow to achieve a $100 billion valuation, which would make it one of the biggest IPOs of all-time."

Comments

Elephant in the room

[Idetuxs]

Someone have to say it: Bubble

There.

Re:Elephant in the room

[Anonymous Coward]

Facebook is indeed profitable.

But merely a fad. Just as much as AOL chat rooms, Friendster and MySpace, and possibly even YouTube and Twitter.

There's nothing demanding that users continue to user Facebook, nothing binds their behavior, and worst of all, user interest can easily evaporate overnight.

Re:Elephant in the room

[SScorpio]

Of course the normal Facebook user doesn't pay anything. They are the product not the customer. Facebook's customers are all the companies that advertise on it, or buy people's private data.

Re:Elephant in the room

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Yeah, you wouldn't want to end up like one of those fools that bought Google stock from August 2004 - Dec 2005 and sold it at literally any time that wasn't Oct 2008 - May 2009. Or even worse, one of those morons that bought it in the first month when it was under $150 a share! I bet they feel dumb now for buying stock in a company that's already successful.

Re:Elephant in the room

[similar_name]

They spy on you whether you have an account or not. Unless you actively make the effort to block their servers from loading widgets on every other page you visit. It may not link you to a name but it does link you to an IP address which often links you to a rough location (and it's just a matter of making a deal with your ISP to link the IP to your name). If Facebook ever gets an ad network going off of Facebook they will have a lot of info related to your ip to serve those ads.

Best avoided

[icebike]

This will open low, shoot high, then nosedive and stay low for a long time.
You can play in this sandbox, as long as you understand that all the sand belongs to someone else, and at bets you can get in, fill your bucket, dump it, and get back out before any one notices you are there.

Everybody recognizes this for what it is, a cashout for the major FB players.

Re:Best avoided

[icebike]

There are very few companies like Facebook whom have no documented source of their income. They are under legal obligation to provide investors with mission & earning statements.

I've read a lot of them.

You will find precious little detail in the revenue side of a 10K. You get exactly what they want you to get, while sales data is masked and obfuscated and aggregated to the point that you can't tell anything from the Balance sheet. Entire massive R&D projects can be hidden on the costs side of the ledger, such that companies like Apple can spring an entire new concept in in smart phones after three years of development with no one having any clear idea of the cost involved, or even that the project was underway from reading financial statements and annual reports.

Seriously, if you think Sarbanes–Oxley or GAAP rules or SEC regulations provide any clarity or a level playing field you are delusional.

It isn't Facebook that's being valued...

[dryriver]

This IPO will basically put a concrete dollar price on what having the "private data" of 800+ million human beings in your fist is worth. Of course the idiots who run Wall Street will value this "precious resource" at Billions of Dollars. That's the only thing the internet means to them: A way to track people, get at their most private data, to then mine that data to devise new ways of selling goods and services to them. ----------- It isn't Facebook that's being valued here. Its "US". The IPO will put a dollar price on what the private data of X million FB users is worth.-------- Someday Facebook will face a serious downturn just like AOL and Yahoo!, and maybe disappear from the internet landscape altogether. That day can't come soon enough considering that the only thing FB trades in is other people's privacy.