Facebook Set for Debut After IPO Seals $104 Billion Value. Facebook Inc. (FB) hovered near the initial public offering price in its trading debut, following a record IPO that made the social network more costly than almost every company in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index. (SPX) The shares rose 23 cents above the IPO price of $38 as of 4 p.m. in New York. Facebook sold 421.2 million shares to raise $16 billion yesterday, giving the company a $104.2 billion market value.
Underwriters bought Facebook’s stock to keep it from falling below the IPO price, people with knowledge of the matter said today. “They squeezed the lemon dry here,” said Dan Veru, chief investment officer at Palisade Capital Management, who didn’t participate in the IPO. The bankers supported the stock after Nasdaq OMX Group Inc. faced difficulties delivering trade execution messages following the IPO, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the transactions are private. 100 Times Earnings The U.S.
GM’s Offering IPO Performance $176 Million Eclipsing Google. Facebook: Dissecting The IPO (Infographic) Facebook Will Have The Biggest Tech IPO Ever, Raising $16 Billion With $38 Share Price. Facebook shares will start trading at $38 tomorrow, the company confirmed in a release, giving it a valuation of $104.12 billion. Facebook and its early shareholders will raise just over $16 billion in tomorrow’s much anticipated IPO. At a $104 billion valuation, Facebook is worth more than any other tech IPO candidate at the time of its offering. It also perfectly matches what Facebook shares have been trading at in secondary markets over the last several months.
Google was worth $23 billion at the time of its very unusual Dutch auction IPO back in 2004. As of tomorrow Facebook will be worth about half of what Google is worth now. The proceeds of the sale are actually split between Facebook and early shareholders like Peter Thiel, DST and Accel Partners. Because Facebook priced at the higher end of its $34 to $38 price range, this suggests that there will unsurprisingly be a lot of demand tomorrow.
Facebook IPO: Final numbers. The Price Is Right: Facebook Closes Near Opening Price - John Paczkowski. After the weeks of private equity dealmaker palm rubbing and investor anticipation that preceded it, Facebook’s IPO on Friday was something of an anticlimax. Shares in the newly public company rose to $45 before closing at $38.23. Moments before first-day trading ended, shares were changing hands at $38.00 — their opening price. Not nearly the blowout that some had been predicting. More of a slowpoke than a superpoke. “Clearly some of the more ahead-of-themselves valuations didn’t stand up all that well to the IPO stress test,” Max Wolff, an analyst at Greencrest Capital Management, told AllThingsD. That said, quite a few millionaires were minted today.
“The company was clearly underwhelming in its debut, but nonetheless claimed a rich valuation,” Wolff said. Stern Agee analyst Arvind Bhatia said he was surprised that Facebook didn’t get quite the pop investors seemed to be expecting. “It was certainly a surprise,” Bhatia told AllThingsD. Investors brace for Facebook debut on Wall Street. Bankers Got Too Aggressive With Pricing Facebook As Shares Barely Break Above $38. The underwriters of Facebook’s $16 billion debut on NASDAQ fought to the finish to keep the company’s shares above last night’s final price of $38 a share.
Shares closed at $38.23 today. Sources tell us that the syndicate of banks underwriting the deal have been putting in buy orders to keep its price afloat. For Facebook itself, it’s actually a great outcome as the company didn’t leave any money on the table. But bankers on the wealth-management side of the underwriters are sure to be unhappy. Plus, the company’s tepid premiere is killing the performance of tech stocks across the board. Basically, what we hear is that the underwriters including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, got too pushy in the final days before the IPO about pricing.
Earlier this month, the company was slated to open at a $28 to 35 price range, but that range was pushed up to $34 to 38 a share. “The only thing keeping it at $38 are support mechanisms,” a source tells us.