This article is more than 1 year old

Zuck plots carefully considered Facebook IPO

Silence, bitch... This $100bn valuation is serious business

Mark Zuckerberg seems to want Facebook's public debut to be as dull as his bluey-grey t-shirts. The dominant social network is widely expected to file regulatory documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission later today. But the company's CEO is reportedly hoping to play down the whole affair.

Kara Swisher over at All Things Digital reports that this conservative approach on the road to an IPO is due to Zuck wanting to "minimise a bubble atmosphere around the event".

In the run-up to what is the most anticipated initial public offering from a tech company since Google's, observers citing those all important people-what-know-stuff-on-the-inside have repeatedly made that bubble awfully big.

Some suggest that the valuation of Facebook could be as high as $100bn: an impressive figure for a company that Zuckerberg started in his dorm back in 2004 at the tender age of 19.

Reports in the past few months have pointed at Facebook having raised somewhere in the region of $10bn for its offering.

According to International Financing Review, the IPO submitted to regulators almost certainly within the next few hours will in fact initially seek to raise $5bn for the offering, with that number increasing if investors pile in.

As for that $100bn valuation, there's little point in anyone accepting such a bullish figure right now. It is well-imformed guesswork about a privately held company with a userbase of 800 million people that can expect intense scrutiny from its shareholders once it does go public. Only then we will really know if it does indeed make Apple "look really cheap". ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like