Facebook is set for an historic IPO today.
May 18, 2012- Facebook set its final stock price at $38 per share for its IPO on Friday. The initial public offering is set for a historic debut on Friday. The price of the IPO now has Facebook valued at $104 billion, making it the largest new public company ever. Facebook expects to raise close to $18.4 billion from the IPO and that would make it the second largest in the U.S., behind only Visa Inc., which had a $19.65 billion IPO in 2008.
The pricing and valuing of Facebook comes at a time when the market is very jittery and lost over 150 points on Thursday. The Dow dropped 156.06 on Thursday and has lost over 6% of its value since May 1. The Nasdaq, where Facebook will start trading on Friday, dropped over 60 points to level off at 2,813.69.
The debut of Facebook has dominated Wall Street and Silicon Valley over the last several weeks, as Facebook and the markets prepared for the IPO, which is the most anticipated initial public offering since Google back in 2004.
Adding to the frenzy is that Facebook is only eight years old and was launched by Mark Zuckerberg from his dorm room at Harvard. Last year Facebook earned over $1 billion, which was an increase of 65% from 2010. Revenue was up 88% in 2011 to $3.7 billion and analysts project that revenue for this year will jump to $6.1 billion.
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