| Facebook set to float on stock exchange as early as Wednesday with a value tipped at $100 BILLION |
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 Already a billionaire on paper, Mark Zuckerberg could cash in a fortune on the open market as soon as Wednesday as Facebook is set to IPO with a value of $75-$100 billion
Facebook's highly anticipated launch as a publicly traded company could happen within days. In what would be the most hotly anticipated consumer technology offering for more than a decade, Facebook could start the process for an initial public offering of stock as early as Wednesday.
The social networking site - which is expected to hit one billion users
this year - would join McDonald's, Amazon.com, Visa and Bank of America
Corp in the top ranks of the largest public companies in the world.
The sale could raise as much as $10 billion (£6.4 billion) in an offering that would value the company at $75 billion to $100 billion (£48 billion to £64 billion), according to the Wall Street Journal. The windfall would dwarf the $1.67 billion (£1 billion) raised in Google's 2004 float. That offering gave Google a market value of $23 billion (£15 billion) - but the company is now worth $184 billion (£117 billion). CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg, 27, is already considered a billionaire because of shares traded on a closed market. The sale could be a boon for Facebook's employees too - Mr Zuckerberg suggested in an interview last year that if his company went public it would be possible to reward staff with 'equity and options'. Up to one third of Facebook's 3,000 staff could become millionaires. However a public listing would also mean Facebook would have to answer to the demands of investors hungry for a profit. And buyers will need deep pockets, with speculation that each single share will be offered at between $38 and $40 (about £24.20 to £25.40). Facebook spokesman Larry Wu said the company will not comment on IPO-related speculation. After filing initial paperwork, shares would normally start trading in around three to four months. For the state of California it can't come soon enough. The fiscally challenged state expects a tax windfall after the IPO. In 2006, two years after Google went public, 16 Google insiders paid the state $380million (£242 million) in taxes after cashing in 9 million shares - enough to cover the salaries of more than 3,000 state workers. When a company goes public stockholders can't sell the shares right away, so takes a little while for the tax income to flow in. The main reason for an IPO is to produce a profit for the company, adding to Mr Zuckerberg’s already estimated net worth of $17.5 billion (£11 billion) with the expected sale of the company's securities. At $100 billion (£63.6 billion) valuation, the company started by Zuckerberg in a Harvard dorm room would have double the valuation of Hewlett-Packard, the Journal said. Facebook's IPO would dwarf that of any other dotcom waiting to go public. Farmville' creator Zynga has filed for an IPO of up to $1 billion (£636 million). In November, daily deals service Groupon debuted with much fanfare, only to plunge below its IPO price within weeks. LinkedIn and Pandora are now also trading significantly below the levels their stocks reached during their public debuts earlier this year. Facebook has become one of the world's most popular Web destinations, challenging established companies such as Google Inc and Yahoo Inc for consumers' online time and for advertising dollars. Facebook does not disclose its financial results, but a source familiar with the situation told Reuters earlier this year that the company's revenue in the first six months of 2011 doubled year-on-year to $1.6 billion (£1 billion). Eric Feng, a former partner at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers who now runs social-networking site Erly.com, said that the cash Facebook will get in an IPO would allow them to make more acquisitions and refine or work on new projects, such as a rumored-Facebook phone or a netbook. Having tradeable stock will also allow Facebook to attract more engineering talent who might have been more attracted to the company in earlier days when it was growing faster but now perhaps might be attracted to other companies. It'll be a powerful bullet for them,' said Feng. Investors have been increasingly eager to buy shares of Facebook and other fast-growing but privately-held Internet social networking companies on special, secondary-market exchanges. Facebook said last January that it will exceed 500 shareholders in 2011, and that in accordance with SEC regulations, it will file public financial reports no later than April 30, 2012.
Source: mail online
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