Facebook Shares Retreat Below IPO Price

First time accepted submitter gtirloni writes "Just days after wrapping up the biggest initial public offering in Silicon Valley history, shares of Facebook slumped 6% and tumbled below their issue price on Monday, a troubling signal for the newly-public social network. Facebook broke below its $38-a-share issue IPO price in the wake of a highly-anticipated offering that raised more than $16 billion, the second-largest domestic IPO after Visa's 2008 debut. Shares of Facebook were recently off 6.44% to $35.72."

Comments

Troubling signal, why?

[partofme]

I can't really understand why you're saying that share price going down on IPO is a troubling signal. During normal operation, sure, but on IPO? It just means that the company didn't undervalue themselves and sell their shares at too low prices.

If I were a shareholder before the IPO and the per share price would had doubled, that would mean half of my potential profit and ownership lost. It's not rocket science. Remember that Facebook fixed their shares price like 8 times to get it to correct level - I'm sure there was tons of people at Facebook trying to evaluate the right price during the last months.

So all in all, it's better for shareholders and Facebook that the price went down instead of up. Otherwise it doesn't really matter. Especially since they already raised that $16 billion on Friday.

So what's the troubling part? I cannot understand.

Re:Troubling signal, why?

[SimonTheSoundMan]

They would go down further if it wasn't for underwriters propping it up, that's the troubling part.

Re:Troubling signal, why?

[polar red]

didn't undervalue themselves

16 billion is about $18 per user. that's ridiculous.

Re:Troubling signal, why?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It appears to be an article of faith among the professional chatterers of the market-news media that THE NUMBERS MUST GO UP!!!!. If interrogated directly, of course, they will concede that 'the market' sometimes requires that the numbers go down, as folly and weakness are eliminated; but day-to-day this saddens them.

Just look at the body of media drivel generated by the recent deflation of the American housing bubble: having a place to live became more affordable than it had been in decades and every last talking head and politician available began screaming about the 'housing crisis'...

There probably are genuinely analytical analysts(who know enough to keep their mouths shut and make real money); but the ones bloviating in public appear to be little more than cheerleaders at a sort of stock market pep rally.

Re:Troubling signal, why?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, the continued game of 'smoke and mirrors' persists on Wall Street.

Tell me again why I should join a game that is inextricably rigged against me, the small-money investor looking for long-term growth?

As an FYI, I don't invest at all.

Re:Troubling signal, why?

[robthebloke]

but only the people willing to pay that much are ridiculous.

link worth reading

Company filings after the market closed on Friday night however revealed the extent to which the banks who led Facebook’s initial public offering - in which $16bn of shares were sold to new investors - were forced to move in to the market and buy shares in order to keep the price above the $38 level. Morgan Stanley, Facebook’s lead financial adviser, ended the day with 162m shares, worth $6.16bn. Other banks including JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs also bought shares, ending the day with $3.2bn and $2.4bn holdings respectively.

So 3 banks have purchased $11.76 bn of the $16bn total facebook stock available to prevent the share price tanking. Need I remind you of their past successes:

JP Morgan: $25 Billion bailout from US tax payers.
Morgan Stanley: $10 Billion bailout from US tax payers.
Goldman Sachs: $10 Billion bailout from US tax payers.

All those banks have repaid the bailout loans (from what I can figure out?), but it looks as though they are each going to make a fairly big loss on this IPO. That's not exactly a good sign that things have changed for the better imho....

Re:Troubling signal, why?

[Zaphod The 42nd]

Facebook gets about $3-5 per person, per year. Which really isn't that much. Google makes much, much more per user, but still nothing crazy.

Revenue per user

I have no clue where the profit is gonna come from to back this up, and I don't think anybody else does either. Facebook's IPO is over 100x their last year's income, which is pretty scary.

The worst part of this is how facebook's quality is going to go massively downhill now as they try to monetize it and squeeze more profit from ads, which in turn will drive users away, requiring them to make more and more money per user, which... Yeah. bad.

Re:Troubling signal, why?

[rhsanborn]

If they personally purchased the stock, then they lost everything in fees. If they bought on behalf of investors, then the investors lost money and the bank made the fees from FB plus the fees from the investors.

Re:Troubling signal, why?

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Because at the very least, you'll be likely to beat inflation with your investments.

Is that even true any more? You can certainly cherry pick market indices and year ranges where they outperform any mainstream interest-bearing savings account, but if you hit any of the black swan periods you're going to suffer badly. Short of some sort of dubious bubble, which isn't inconceivable, it could be a decade or more before anyone who had invested before the recent crash gets back to the same level they would have been at without that crash. That's assuming that the markets do pick up some time in the near future, they sustain an above average growth rate until they've made up any remaining shortfall from the down years, and nothing else happens to cut everything in half again. I live in Europe, so I'm not convinced at all that we're out of the woods yet.

All of that is considering investing in a general market tracker of some sort. Obviously you can potentially do much better if you invest in the right stocks individually, but plenty of professionals who do that still don't beat throwing a dart at the FT listings page. It's a fool's game for small investors who aren't willing to spend a great deal of time learning about both the mechanics of financial markets and the specific investments they're considering making.

If you want to keep your money worth the same amount in real terms over the long run, are you better off just buying gold these days?

Re:When doing it right is wrong

[Dcnjoe60]

It stayed within 10% because JP Morgan was paid $177 million to insure the stock. a bad bet for them; who knows how much they stand to lose now that they've had to buy so much FB stock to cover the policy? They're the big losers here, not the FB guys who dumped half their insider stock on Friday and made a killing.

There is a reason why after the depression that banks were not allowed to venture into speculative markets and real estate and the like. Then in the 90s, most of those laws were rescinded under the guise that regulation was hurting the banking industry. Now that a new generation has had experience with what happens when somebody your trust gambles with your money, maybe we'll go back to regulating banks so that they don't speculate on markets and insuring stock issues. Just a thought.