Facebook’s much-anticipated IPO looks to be coming ever-closer, with a new report out with further details of what we will see come Wednesday morning.
According to the International Financing Review, Facebook will be filing to raise $5 billion in a preliminary initial public offering prospectus on Wednesday morning. IFR cites unnamed people close to the deal as its source for the news.
That sum is significantly less than the $10 billion IPO that people have been reporting — perhaps in response to some of the other IPOs hits and misses we saw last year among other internet heavy-hitters like Zynga and Groupon (NSDQ: GRPN). However, as IFR points out that number could go higher if investors demand it.
Also, because of this, no target valuation will be set tomorrow, writes IFR — contrary to the $80-billion valuations that we’ve seen floated around.
IFR says there will be five banks involved in the deal, Morgan Stanley in the lead, with Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and JP Morgan participating as well. That number could go up too, it noted.
The IPO is projected to be finalized by May 2012.
Between now and then people will be going over Facebook’s filing with a fine-toothed comb looking for the smallest overlooked detail about how the company plans to make money in the future, what might affect those plans, and what its margins are today as it serves its 800 million (and counting) users.
$5 billion is still a lot of money – and I suppose they had to do it – but I think there will be quite a bit of disappointment with the lowering of the amount. They’re raising a lower amount of cash plus they have to now act like a public company and reveal everything about their numbers. Definitely a lot of risk here considering users are really starting to hate the site. This could be yet another misstep.
http://mankabros.com/blogs/onmedea/2012/01/27/facebook-and-the-disappearing-valuation/
I am afraid that they are on the peak, from IPO it will be only downhill..