Facebook goes for IPO

01.02.2012 Today, 1 February 2012 Facebook documents submission for IPO is scheduled. However, according to experts’ opinion, it may be postponed until the middle of the current month. It’s likely that the procedure of IPO, possible organizers of which could be banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, will take place in April-June 2012.

It seems that public offering of shares of this social network can be a real record among Internet companies. Capitalization is estimated at 75-100 bln. USD and the planned investments - 10 bln. USD.

However not all the experts are optimistic for the coming IPO of Facebook. Many of them believe that if the company is estimated at 75-100 bln. USD and is planning to attract about 10 bln. USD then its shares should be estimated at 497% more than Apple shares and 294% higher than the shares of Google. In such a situation a rational assumption is that Facebook company risks to collapse at the stock exchange the next day.

Expert’s opinion

“At the moment only two social networks decided to go for IPO and attract funds from the market. This is a Chinese social network Renren (the date of IPO: 4 May 2011), which entered the market two weeks earlier than the USA LinkedIn (the date of IPO: 19 May 2011).
Both attracted more than planned, the quotes of LinkedIn rose but Renren fell in price and quite significantly (information dated December 2011).

Is Facebook overestimated? Will quotations fall or go up in price after IPO? - This is the main intrigue.

LinkedIn gives hope for growth. In the case of successful public offering of Facebook it is expected that the Russian network Vkontakte will also begin active operations in this direction”.

On the basis: www.rbc.ru

Lomakin Yaroslav ( managing partner of Honest&Bright company)