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.
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.<p>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.
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.
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.
They know they are overvalued and the stock will go down from there.<p>Why? Because the IPO ist gigantic, could be one of the biggest in history.<p>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.<p>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.
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.