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

[Yvanhoe]

I hope so. I fear it is not. Facebook is indeed profitable. I doubt it has much room left to grow a lot but it is a company that is worth a lot already.

My bet is that the IPO will be a success, just not an hysteric one.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

My bet is that, just like in most IPOs, the only people to make money from it will be the institutional investors that get in as preferred (early access before normal trading). They'll then cash out as early trading and the "day trader" mentality causes the price to go spiking up. The folks that buy during that spike will be left holding the (empty) bag. Again, as usual. This seems to always happen on these "big" IPO offers. Google's was the same way. Now - if you buy during the spike, you might still make money if you can steel yourself to hold onto it for awhile. Maybe. If you are lucky. Otherwise, for folks like the average slashdot reader, it is a "don't buy".

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

[craigtp]

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.

Oh but there is something demanding that users continue to use Facebook: The Network Effect.

And within Facebook's network effect, Critical mass has long since been surpassed and Metcalfe's Law has grown to such a large proportion that, for current users of Facebook, leaving Facebook is akin to simply switching off the internet altogether.

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

[DerekLyons]

Google's was the same way.

No, it wasn't. On opening day it closed at 100.35, and except for two days two weeks after their IPO... it's never been below that.

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

[Kenja]

When it drops low enough I'll buy a single share so I can get on the investors mailing list. Cant wait to see documented information about how they make their money. Should be a fun read.

Re:Best avoided

[icebike]

I'm on a lot of such lists, and you will never read anything of interest there.

Re:Best avoided

[alexander_686]

Why borther with buying a share? Anything they send out to shareholders they also have to publish on SEC's Edger. It is a great little resource.

http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html

Now, buy a share of Berkshire Hathaway. You can get the information off the SEC, but Buffett really knows how to put on a show.

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.

Re:Best avoided

[vlm]

You have it wrong. They have to document a semi-detailed, lets say, one page income statement listing classes of income, and it gets stamped with the approval of a corrupt auditing agency (recall recent scandals where it was all faked).

Trust me, Wisconsin Energy does not give me a copy of individual bills in each quarterly statement. You get lines like "$1B revenue from electric"

Re:Best avoided

[kiwimate]

Read the footnotes. That's where you'll find the really juicy stuff. Not everything is disclosed, certainly; but the footnotes are where the traders spend the vast majority of their time.

Eh??

[jamstar7]

I thought it already was public. My personal data is all over the internet.

Oh, they're taking their STOCK public. *Nevermind*...

Imma let you finish

[MrEricSir]

"...which would make it one of the biggest IPOs of all-time."

Look Google I'm really happy for you and Imma let you finish. But Facebook is the BIGGEST IPO OF ALL TIME!

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.

FB? really?

[vlm]

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.

Re:Yep...

[koan]

Oh and this...

Venture capitalists fund startups that leverage Facebook data to disrupt their incumbents. Former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya left the company to start a venture capital firm with a single mission: fund companies that will use Facebook's open APIs to take over large, calcified industries like banking, education, and healthcare. Palihapitiya is funding a banking startup, for example, that will give potential customers a credit score based on their Facebook activity. Potential: Unknown. The idea is that Facebook will profit from companies using its data to disrupt incumbants the way it figured out how to profit from Facebook gamesmaker Zynga's disruption of the videogame industry.

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#ixzz1tkNTU9mH

Scary.