It's Here: Facebook Files for $5B IPO

Company's ticker symbol will be FB
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 1, 2012 4:04 PM CST
It's Here: Facebook Files for $5B IPO
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a file photo.   (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

Mark Zuckerberg's little startup filed papers with the SEC today to become a publicly traded company. Some of the Facebook particulars:

  • The company says it plans to raise $5 billion, but that figure is expected to rise to perhaps $10 billion by the time the big day arrives in the spring. (The AP thinks the stock will debut in May.)
  • The Wall Street Journal pegs the company's potential value at between $75 billion and $100 billion.
  • The ticker symbol will be FB, though the filing didn't specify which exchange would be used for trading, notes MarketWatch.
  • The company reported $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, up from about $2 billion in 2010. Analysts expected $4.3 billion, says the Journal.

  • A Zuckerberg quote from a letter to future shareholders: "We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits." TechCrunch has the full text here.
  • Facebook should shatter the figures from 2004 IPO of Google, which raised $1.9 billion and valued the company at $23 billion.
  • See the filing for yourself here.
(More Facebook stories.)

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