SAN FRANCISCO _ Dressed in his trademark hoodie and jeans, Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg kicked off a cross-country road show to pitch his company’s initial public stock offering.
Hundreds of institutional investors stood in long lines Monday to pile into a ballroom at New York’s Sheraton Hotel to hear the billion-dollar pitch from the 27-year-old chief executive before his company’s hotly anticipated IPO. The meeting was closed to the media.
Facebook is trying to build excitement for the IPO that in a few weeks could value the company at more than $96 billion. That would make it the largest offering to come out of Silicon Valley. The Menlo Park, Calif., company said last week that it would offer 337.4 million shares at $28 to $35 each.
Investors expect that price range to jump as the road show makes its way across the nation, including stops in Boston and Chicago. Facebook plans to raise as much as $11.8 billion in its IPO. It’s expected to price the offering May 17 and begin trading the next day. The shares will be listed on the Nasdaq Stock Market under the symbol FB.
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A recent radio program report on early onset dementia, reported that lack of exercise means less blood to the brain, and that causes problems in the brain development of young people. Furthermore, even mild obesity causes blood vessels to carry less blood to the brain, and lack of sleep has other ill effects on cognitive ability.
Spending too much time on computers playing games and twittering on social network sites such as Facebook, have been cited as contributors to this increasing problem.
I think the pecuniary value of something should reflect it’s inherent, tangible worth, not simply it’s usefulness as a place to post advertisements for things that also have no intrinsic worth.
I agree with [email protected], but further I think FB has passed its peak ‘intrusion’, so although it will take some time I believe anyone who invests for more than the initial ‘kick’ attaching to the IPO will be disappointed over coming years. And does anyone know just what the $11Bn is to be spent upon, or if the earnings of FB support such a valuation?
Also Y, I read the other day that lack of sleep causes fat to be accumulated; a possible cause for concern for some of our fair hostesses given the all-hours moderation which sometimes seems to occur 😉
Just after I posted the above the Business Spectator hit my inbox. Hope this linksurvives, because it mentions earnings of $1Bn on a value of $100Bn – which I make 1%. And then there’s the question of privacy and exploitation of data – a problem which will become larger not smaller as both governments and business become more expert at protecting/projecting their interests.
[email protected] Go to bed immediately. Fatty deposits due to sleep deprivation are not going to help you cope with slings and arrows. 🙂
Mmm… I wouldn’t be investing @ 1%. And if future lawyers’ bills erode that then….
I’m afraid I have the Warren Buffett view of investment: if I can’t see how it makes its money, I won’t buy. I do not understand how either Facebook or Twitter are supposed to make their money, and I strongly suspect neither will be around in 5 years’ time. A late manifestation of the dot com bust, methinks.
From what I’ve read Facebook don’t need the cash. Data centre expansion and other costs are easily covered by existing revenue streams. The push to go public is likely because a bunch of people with some clout have decided it’s time to cash in.
Just a friendly warning, [email protected]: anyone who makes an issue of my ‘fatty deposits’ will have their kneecaps broken. {wags finger}
I don’t think Facebook is much of a business proposition. In some ways it’s more like publishing in that it claims to offer advertisers access to a large audience but is liable to be overtaken by other technologies in the mid to longer term in the same way newspapers have been, so continued profitability is more precarious. It is however useful for managing a modern social life, so they will retain users and thus audience longer (though I’d agree with SL that twitter will be dead within the next five years.) The timing might make the SEC wonder whether the decision by Facebook to pay such a massive premium for Instagram was a deliberate attempt to prime the market in the lead-up to the IPO. Wonder what the American rules are on that sort of thing.