

Facebook Targeting IPO for Between April and June  - law
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203935604577066773790883672.html

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npollock
They're probably hoping that everyone will have forgotten about the Groupon
IPO by then. Groupon is trading around the $15 mark, or exactly half of it's
opening day high, $31.14. It's well below the IPO price of $20, and it's
looking like the biggest tech embarrassment of the year.

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qq66
Facebook and Groupon have basically nothing in common.

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blantonl
When you go public you are opening up the kimono to the public. It appears
that Facebook feels they are ready for that public financial scrutiny.

It will be fascinating to see how Facebook generates revenue, spends money,
and maintains net income. I'm really looking forward to this IPO, solely for
those reasons.

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kooshball
AFAIK, they already went over the 500 shareholders limit so they have to open
the books whether they IPO or not.

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Tossrock
Valuing 25:1 against yearly revenue seems a bit high. I mean, I'm sure it'll
still ride a rocket the moment it goes public, but I think it'll peter out
sooner than most long term investors would like.

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rdl
I'm not even that sold on social media in general, but I'm comfortable with
Facebook as a company due to three main factors:

1) Great leadership (Mark obviously, but a lot of the other people around him,
all the way down to Manager level, are great; the drop 1-2 levels to join FB
thing seems to have paid off)

2) Attract great team (it seems to be the strongest recruiting organization
for a company its size, and overall I'd say FB engineering hires are among the
best)

3) Successful track record of innovating and turning even fairly mundane
problems into technology showcases

Even if this whole "social media" thing peters out in a few years, I think
Facebook will continue to innovate and remain a dominant player in whatever
comes next.

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andrewhillman
I hope they do the IPO in a creative way like google did w/ dutch auction. I
have a feeling they will. I am sure they have put a lot of thought into how
they want to handle it.

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sek
They know they are overvalued and the stock will go down from there.

Why? Because the IPO ist gigantic, could be one of the biggest in history.

Google did start with just 1,9B. They were thinking the opposite. In order not
to be ripped of, they tried to evaluate a base to raise money when needed.

The sad thing is, it will work. Facebook is overhyped in the media and the
little guy believes it will be a Google story. It is still a very risky
business and they can lose a lot of money.

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sek
When i think about the volume, maybe it won't be that bad. A demand based
increase will be unlikely and there could be a lot of institutional portfolio
investments. I rather see this money at Facebook to be independent, what also
means less uncertainty for the users and their data.

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goodweeds
As a long-time resident of San Francisco I'm hoping we have some sort of
2008-esque financial holocaust this summer to offset the damage facebook's ipo
will do to the housing market.

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RShackleford
i am not going to pay a cent for such a ridiculous firm.

