508 million shared * 4.60 = 2.33 Billion
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=FB
Should he dump it and buy aapl?
508 million shared * 4.60 = 2.33 Billion
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=FB
Should he dump it and buy aapl?
Awwwwwe. I feel so bad. Karma bit his selfish asss but good. And that goes for the rest of you fools that gobbled up the phoney hype. Hope it tanks to .50 a share.
Science! wrote:
508 million shared * 4.60 = 2.33 Billion
http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=FBShould he dump it and buy aapl?
No, the people he suckered,... I mean sold his IPO to lost money.
Told you he shouldn't have rocked that hoodie.
"Karma bit his selfish asss but good."
Um, did you see his hot wife? He's got it good!
he has(had) billions of dollars, his wife wasn't THAT hot.
Suckerberg, excuse my french.
I love it, this country has proven once again what a bunch of ignorant sheep it is. The entire scam that is the financial investment system was once again played out before everyone's very eyes out in the open and there's nothing anyone can do or will do about it. If you or I operated the way they played out this IPO we'd all be in prison right now.
Are you saying that Facebook is a passing fad and has no chance of generating the profits that would justify its current valuation?
If not, what are you saying?
Aren't they just paper "losses" at this point?
We are seeing markets being kept alive by the insemination of liquidity by the Fed, and facebook goes IPO??? bahahahahahaha This will go down as the stupidist business move in the history of mankind! And ironically enough, it coincides with the stupidist collection of human beings in history! I know some people that work at facebook and I will say that they are "intelligent", but not very smart...
Maybe she shorted FB heavily today?
Yes it is a fad, being totally taken advantage of. That's how scams usually start. The offered price, offered exclusively to other finacial institutions and corporations, is fixed and backed by the offerer's financing. Once it no longer suits their needs to keep it at its inflated price, ie-making it available to the general public to slurp up the sh1t that's about to be left behind, they pull their backing and you get the double digit percentage fall in value you have today. The ones meant to get rich off it do and then they drop the bottom out of it. The first thing anyone that knows about wall street is going to say is "that's how IPOs work." And they'd be correct. That's why I say this country is sheep. It's how the damn industry operates. It should be illegal. Also, don't forget about all the congressional insider trading that goes on that you and I would also be imlrisoned for.
Yeah before you say it I got my tinfoil hat on. If that's going to make you feel better.
Imprisoned.
May 21, 2012
INSIDE JOB: FACEBOOK I.P.O. SHOWS SYSTEM IS BROKEN
Posted by John Cassidy
Monday morning’s big fall in Facebook’s stock hardly came as a shocker. It was clear on Friday that, at the offering price of $38 a share, there were more sellers than buyers. The only reason the stock held up was that Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter on the initial public offering, stepped and supported it. At the opening of trading this morning, the stock fell $5, to $33, before rebounding a bit. (At 2:30 P.M., it was at $34.75.)
That’s bad news for investors who thought their luck was in when they were allocated some Facebook stock. It’s also worrying news for I.P.O.s and the capital markets in general. In fact, a strong argument can be made that Facebook’s shaky start as a public company demonstrates that the entire I.P.O. process, which is supposed to spread the rewards to innovation, is broken. By the time Facebook started trading on the public market, insiders—the company’s founders, employees, and venture-capitalist backers—had bagged most, if not all, of the company’s value for themselves.
That’s fair enough, you may say. Mark Zuckerberg and some Harvard pals created the company. It was Facebook’s professional managers, such as Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, and David Ebersman, the chief financial officer, who turned it into a real business. And it was some savvy venture capitalists, such as Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, and David Sze of Greylock Partners, who first spotted its potential. Surely, these are the folks who should be rewarded. (Bono’s investment, which my colleague Virginia Cannon wrote about, also falls into the reasonably early category. In April, 2010, Elevation Partners, a venture-capital firm in which Bono is a partner, paid ninety million dollars for one per cent of Facebook.)
Up to a point, I would agree with you. But the I.P.O. system only works if it preserves a balance between public and private investors. If this balance is upended, and the rewards are reserved for insiders, ordinary investors will refuse to play the game. A dearth of I.P.O.s would hurt insiders along with everybody else. More important, a time-tested system of financing companies, which rewards innovation and makes Silicon Valley the envy of the world, would be destroyed.
Traditionally, I.P.O.s provided early-stage technology companies with cash to finance their expansion. They also allowed early investors, the founders included, to extract some cash. Public investors, in return for bearing considerable risk, got the opportunity to share some of the wealth these companies created. Investors who bought into companies such as Amazon.com, Apple, and Google at the beginning and stuck with them saw their investments double many times over. In the case of Facebook deal, and in several I.P.O.s that preceded it, such as those involving Zynga and Groupon, ordinary investors were largely cut out of the wealth-creation process, and well-connected investment firms took their place.
The fact is, Facebook’s I.P.O. wasn’t really an “initial” stock offering. In December, 2010, Goldman Sachs raised $500 million for the company in a deal that, following objections from the Securities and Exchange Commission, was limited to overseas investors. In the I.P.O. world, these late-stage quasi-public offerings are called “D-rounds,” and they are becoming increasingly common. Zynga did one before its I.P.O., and so did Groupon. They provide a cashing-out opportunity for insiders who would rather not wait until the I.P.O. More to the point, they allow “hot” companies to bid up the price of their stocks well before the investing public gets a sniff.
Groupon’s D-round, which raised $950 million in January, 2011, valued the company at close to $5 billion. (It is now valued at $8 billion.) The Goldman offering for Facebook valued the company at $50 billion. (It is now valued at about $95 billion.) The valuations put on the companies in these deals were quickly reflected in the so-called “gray market,” where investors in the know could buy and sell the firms’ stocks well before they started trading on the open markets. Now that Facebook’s stock is trading publicly, many of the early players have already sold out, taking a handsome profit.
How will the public investors fare? So far, they aren’t doing well, but it is still early. I said the other day that Facebook isn’t necessarily a bubble stock, but it is undoubtedly a very expensive one. Buyers are bearing a lot of risk, and it is hard to see them ever reaping the sort of returns that investors in companies like Amazon and Google enjoyed. At twenty-five times trailing revenues and a hundred times trailing earnings, the $38 I.P.O. is already discounting an awful lot of expansion—and this at a time when Facebook’s growth rate has already slowed.
Maybe I am a grouch. But it all sounds suspiciously like an inside job, in which the last ones in, the ordinary investors, are the saps. (In this week’s magazine, James Surowiecki highlights another way in which the I.P.O. favored insiders.) At the very least, this entire issue is something that the authorities—the S.E.C., but also the Nasdaq and other stock exchanges—should be looking at closely.
YES!!!! A RICH PERSON IS LOSING MONEY!!! YES!!!!! DOWN WITH THE RICH!!!!! WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! LET'S STRING HIM UP AND CUT HIS DICK OFF BECAUSE HE'S RICH AND I'M NOT!!!!!
1200er wrote:
Maybe she shorted FB heavily today?
You can't short FB yet, and won't be able to for a few days (IPO rules). That will be when the REAL losses begin.
Another shoe will drop in couple of months when the underwriters are done with FB and it has to stand on it's own.
He should have sold all his shares that first day.
You guys don't get the picture. What Zuck/FB did was maximize the money they got during the IPO.
Zuck didn't lose any money today, he still owns the same amount of shares. He sold a few billion during the IPO, that money is his, the rest is "virtual". If he was trying to liquidate now, he couldn't. The stock would go down massively.
Maybe there will be a 2nd IPO next year at 20 USD, or it will be at 50 USD. Who knows.
wrote:
Yes it is a fad, being totally taken advantage of. That's how scams usually start. The offered price, offered exclusively to other finacial institutions and corporations, is fixed and backed by the offerer's financing. Once it no longer suits their needs to keep it at its inflated price, ie-making it available to the general public to slurp up the sh1t that's about to be left behind, they pull their backing and you get the double digit percentage fall in value you have today. The ones meant to get rich off it do and then they drop the bottom out of it. The first thing anyone that knows about wall street is going to say is "that's how IPOs work." And they'd be correct. That's why I say this country is sheep. It's how the damn industry operates. It should be illegal. Also, don't forget about all the congressional insider trading that goes on that you and I would also be imlrisoned for.
Yeah before you say it I got my tinfoil hat on. If that's going to make you feel better.
Your post is far longer and more poorly written than would be optimal. You sound more like someone ranting than someone making a valid point.
My original question stands, do you think that Facebook has no realistic chance of generating profits the would justify such a valuation? I would suggest that this proposition is iffy at best.
I would also suggest that while there were many well-connected and wealthy individuals and institutions cashing out at the IPO there were equally many well-connected and wealthy individuals and institutions getting in at that time. These folks getting in at the IPO price are not in the habit of being bamboozled and losing their shirts on IPOs.
Truth in Advertising: I am not a fan of Zuck (completely indifferent to him as an individual) nor a great fan of FB (basically I despise most of what I have seen regarding people spending time on FB). Nonetheless I try not to let these opinions cloud my judgment as to the business prospects of the company. Said prospects strike me as potentially quite good if they play their cards right. Risky but not vacuous.