Facebook is seeking to finally go public in the second quarter of 2012, with an initial registration statement to be filed by the end of December, according to the Wall Street Journal on Monday. The social networking site expects to raise about $10 billion, the largest by any technology company, from the much awaited initial public offering that would give Facebook a market valuation of about $100 billion.
The Facebook IPO, targeted between April and June 2012, has been long awaited since the hugely successful offering from online professional networking site Linkedln Corp. (LNKD) in May. The LinkedIn IPO opened yet another Pandora's Box on the Wall Street, and ushered in a new era of internet and social media companies floating on the stock market.
There were a slew of Internet technology companies that made their successful debut on Wall Street after Linkedln, including Pandora Media Inc. (P), Renren Inc. (RENN) and Zillow, Inc. (Z).
Meanwhile, some who have filed for IPOs after the resounding success of Linkedln IPO have even delayed their offering amid the uncertainty in the global markets. These include online gaming start-up Zynga, Inc. and also online coupon site Groupon, Inc. (GRPN), which listed not so successfully earlier this month after a near two-month delay.
Daily deals website LivingSocial, which is a competitor of Groupon, is also reportedly gearing up to file for an about $1 billion IPO, which it is now planning to scale down.
Palo Alto, California-based Facebook reportedly has about 800 million global users currently, with about 500 million of them logging in every day. Its growing ambitions have been disrupting the businesses of established companies such as Google, Inc. (GOOG) and Yahoo, Inc. (YHOO).
Facebook was launched in February 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, its co-founder and chief executive, along with Havard mates Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes and Eduardo Saverin. It soon reached one million users by December 2004, 100 million users in August 2008 and 500 million users by July 2010.
It raised its first round of venture capital funding of $12.7 million from Accel Partners in May 2005, with other high profile investors such as Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (GS) following. Yahoo even offered up to $1 billion to buy Facebook in September 2006.
Zuckerberg has always been reluctant to the idea of going public, but has now reportedly decided to go ahead with the offering, and his team has also been talking to bankers on the offering.
Early this year, Facebook, along with micro-blogging website Twitter, Zynga and LinkedIn, faced an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission or SEC into the increasingly hot private market for their shares. As per the reports, the inquiry was focused on whether certain companies are improperly using the private market to get around public disclosure requirements.
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