According to Wall Street Journal, Facebook Inc. could file papers for an initial public offering as early as next week and Morgan Stanley could be the lead underwriter for its IPO. The social networking giant is currently looking at a valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion, this person said. Facebook’s IPO could raise as much as $10 billion for the Californian company, which now has more than 800 million members worldwide.
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Facebook has been running as a private company for over 7 years, and the IPO will help raise capital to move the set-up forward, and enrich its stakeholders. Going public will have its perks but also means Facebook will now have to report quarterly and annual earnings as well as more detailed information and scrutiny from the public eye.
The largest global technology IPO on record was a $5.9 billion offer in 2000 by Infineon Technologies AG, the former semiconductor unit of Siemens AG. The largest global Internet IPO was a $2.8 billion sale by World Online International NV, a European Internet service provider, also in 2000. The largest U.S. Internet IPO, the $1.9 billion sale in 2004 by Google Inc. which valued Google at $23 billion, ranks No. 3 among global Internet IPOs.
Source: Wall Street Journal
