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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."
Someone have to say it: Bubble
There.
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.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I thought it already was public. My personal data is all over the internet.
Oh, they're taking their STOCK public. *Nevermind*...
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Look Google I'm really happy for you and Imma let you finish. But Facebook is the BIGGEST IPO OF ALL TIME!
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
What is Facebook's actual revenues? Something like $200M quarterly?
LA Times is reporting $3.7B annual revenue, so an average $925M quarterly.
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.
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
In the real estate biz FB means "f*cked buyer" like a guy who bought at a multigenerational top of a housing bubble, or a guy trying to do landlording from another coast, or a guy stuck paying two mortgages because the old house won't sell, guy who bought without contingencies/no inspection and got screwed, guy who believed the lying commissioned real estate agent when she said there were multiple offers so he should raise his bid but there were no offers (she tried that on me and my wife, I laughed at her) etc. Basically a loanowner who didn't get the house he was expecting. Makes all the comments "FB this" and "FB that" sound much funnier.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
a $100 billion company should be making a truckload more than that.
google (current market cap $200billion) pulls in about $10billion in quarterly revenue...
judging by that facebook is at best a $20 billion company. about 1/10th the size of google.
yeah, it is a bit more complicated than that, but still facebook is worth nowhere near $100 billion. and really they don't have a whole lot of growth left, they have saturated their market pretty well.
Bubble goes pop.
Facebook's ad business isn't very (or so some claim) because of the way they target ads (like TV ads) so expect a lot fo change (again) in Facebook's policies.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/05/02/businessinsiderfacebooks-lousy-ad-b.DTL
Your Facebook ID becomes the way you pay for everything online and offline. Long-term, one of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's goals seems to be for your Facebook ID to be your ID everywhere. Given smartphone adoption, you can imagine this happening online and off. If that were to happen, the easiest way for Facebook to make money would be to facilitate offline and online transactions. Potential: PayPal, part of eBay, has an enterprise value close to $20 billion or so. Visa has a market cap of $100 billion.
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-lousy-ad-business-is-making-its-ipo-is-looking-hairier-by-the-minute--heres-why-it-doesnt-matter-2012-5#ixzz1tkK42pqr
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
I had that experience, where a house was listed at X, but was told that really it was X+delta close to X itself, because there was bidding war in progress. We walked away right then, and the realtor trying it on us then tried to backpedal, whereupon I told her "You're playing games with us, and because of that, I won't buy this house at ANY price, because I will assume any offer I make that you or your client find acceptable will screw me." It's a form of bait-and-switch and I won't play that game... but a lot of people "fall in love" with a house and have to have it. I guess I've had too many houses in my life to really get that attached to them.
The NASDAQ OMX equities exchanges currently participate in the National Market System Symbology Plan for the selection and use of 1-5 character root symbols, as governed by ISRA, the Intermarket Symbols Reservation Authority.
NASDAQ, NYSE, and other exchanges like to reserve 1 and 2 letter ticker symbols in order to attract big companies to list on their exchange.
F is for Ford
S is for Sprint-Nextel
T is for AT&T
If you poke around, you'll discover companies you've never heard of, but who are major players in their market
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I'd disagree about their growth potential. Certainly their user growth will slow down, but there are plenty of untapped revenue streams - for example mobile ads.
But as for the rest I think you're pretty spot on. I took a quick scan of GOOGs 2011 numbers and they have about the same profit margin and a better debt ratio than Facebook, so it's hard for me to see the justification for having 1/2 the market cap of GOOG with ~1/10th the revenue and 1/10th the net income.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
mostly family or family allies.
What are you, a Lannister?
Ceci n'est pas un sig.