Well, it’s here! Today Facebook made its public debut, starting this morning when Mark Zuckerberg rang Nasdaq’s ceremonial opening bell signaling Facebook’s first official day of trading. On Monday, news broke that the initial share pricing would be between $28 and $34 and quickly jumped into the range of $34 and $38. Soon after, Facebook priced its IPO at $38 a share, making Facebook the largest technology IPO ever. Facebook raised $16 billion dollars yesterday when the 421 million shares were priced, valuing the company at $104 billion.
Facebook shares were due to start trading a little after 11am this morning and it’s been a while since investors were scrambling this much. It’s unlikely that individual investors will get a piece of this social company at $38 a share as larger institutional investors usually get first dibs on IPOs. Most likely, private investors will be paying a much higher price.
Facebook is expected to see a big first day based solely on all of the hype surrounding the IPO. Remember when LinkedIn went public last year, priced at $45 and closed at $94.23 after hitting a high of $122.70? Investors are anticipating a similar pop. Others are questioning the company and highly anticipated IPO, drawing references to both Zynga and Groupon, which were both big IPOs and quickly died out.
Either way, Facebook is one of the largest social media websites with over 900 million users and no one is going anywhere soon, so Facebook is collaborating more ideas on how to make more money.
Facebook ranks as the 36th company in the world. They will trade under the ticker symbol FB on the Nasdaq and U.S. stocks are up, thanks in large part to all the craze surrounding Facebook going public.
