Verified Document

The IPO Of Facebook And It's Stock Performance Essay

Company Valuation The valuation and method used to determine the Initial Public Offering (IPO) value of Facebook stock was based on numerous factors. First, it was a much-hyped IPO, with retail investors seeking to get in on the action that venture capitalists had already secured years prior through private investment. Everything connected in one way or another to Facebook was receiving attention, even Zynga, the one-hit wonder PC-game producer. Second, the company’s worth was measured by clicks and projected ad revenue as well as by the number of users of the company’s products. The company had stated a net income of $1 billion in 2011, up 65% year-over-year, indicating that it was steamrolling to profits. With 845 million monthly active users and 483 million daily active users, it was positioned as a great platform for advertsing. Its market cap, however, was a stagger $104 billion at the time of the IPO (a P/E well above the industry average), which led some analysts to conclude the stock was overvalued and the result of a “new financial bubble” (Gajic, Budinski-Petkovic, 2013, p. 208). This may have led early investors to dump the stock soon after its IPO, which could explain the stock’s plunge in the following months to $17.55. It quickly rebounded though and steadily rose with good news coming annually out of HQ. Today, its market cap sits at $496.47 billion. The pricing errors might have been minimized by evaluating external factors alongside internal factors (such as a yield-starved marketplace).

The Facebook IPO was based on the issue of supply and demand as well—the number of shares being sold to the public and the demand from the public for those shares. The public was very aware of how cheaply it could have purchased shares of Google at its IPO price and Facebook was considered to be the next Internet phenomenon. At the same time, there were plenty of skeptics amid all the speculators seeking to cash in on the next big thing (Cauwels, Sornette, 2012). With an IPO of $38 per share on 18 May 2012 and 421,233,615 shares offered, the $16.007 billion raised made it the biggest tech IPO in U.S. history at the time. Immediately following, the share price dipped—but a buyer of the stock at that price would be holding a ten-bagger today as the stock valuation of the company has increased 10-fold over the past 5 years.

The performance of the stock within the first year of the public offering was depreciation...

Indeed, the IPO market in general felt the underpricing was off “and the average level of underpricing increased from 11% pre-Facebook to 20% post-Facebook” (Krigman, Jeffus, 2016, p. 335). The stock initially declined out of the gate, dropping by half. It then recovered to $24.35 by 31 May 2013, peaking at $31 in January of 2013. The drivers of the performance were questions about the company’s ability to make money, and the resulting impact to the company performance was that it essentially stayed range-bound for the entire first year, never rising above its IPO pricing. Investors were waiting to see how its Q1 would look. When quarterly financials began to be released, investors piled in and never looked back.
An alternative method of valuation for the company and how it may have yielded a different value and the potential resulting impact to investor decisions would have been for the company to consider the fact that social media is not going away—and Facebook is not stuck to the original platform either but also can expand—and that is what it aimed to do with mobile technology and platforms like Instagram. With $1 billion in revenue, prior to its IPO, the company was clearly in line with what Modis (2002) recognized as a growth trend blossoming on social tech. Thus an alternative method of valuation would have been to identify the trend that Facebook was in and was, in fact, setting alongside other social media giants—and how that trend would ultimately kickstart its valuation the way that Amazon and Netflix eventually caught on with investors. Assessing the social trend in this sense would be the key to valuation. The potential resulting impact to investor decisions would be that the investor would rightly spot Facebook as a herald of things to come and buy the stock (preferably on its dips) and accumulate a position gradually but prior to the releasing of financials indicating its ability to truly make a significant profit (Cusumano, 2012).

The role of the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in relationship to the stock performance is also vital. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the face of the company: his story was immortalized on film in David Fincher’s The Social Network in 2010—two years prior to the company’s IPO and a good marketing ploy that helped drum up interest in the stock. Prior to the offering, Zuckerberg made many public appearances and met…

Sources used in this document:

References

Cauwels, P., Sornette, D. (2012). Quis pendit ipsa pretia: Facebook valuation and

diagnostic of a bubble based on nonlinear demographic dynamics. Journal of Portfolio Management, 38(2): 56-66.

Cusumano, M. (2012). Reflecting on the Facebook IPO. Communications of the ACM,

55(10): 20-23.

Gajic, N., Budinski-Petkovic, L. (2013). Ups and downs of economic and

econophysics—Facebook forecast. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 392(1): 208-214.

Krigman, L., Jeffus, W. (2016). IPO pricing as a function of your investment banks’

past mistakes: The case of Facebook. Journal of Corporate Finance, 38: 335-344.

Cite this Document:
Copy Bibliography Citation

Related Documents

IPO Facebook, a Leading Social Networking Service
Words: 1722 Length: 5 Document Type: Essay

IPO Facebook, a leading social networking service with users in excess of 800 million, has today grown far beyond the expectations of most right from the time it was founded. Launched sometimes in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg and several other colleagues of his in college, Facebook has gradually become a force to recon with in the social networking field. The company is currently seeking to raise approximately $10billion from an

Common Stock and Facebook
Words: 1965 Length: 6 Document Type: Essay

Company Valuation Facebook IPO Valuation Method In accordance to the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) Registration Statement Form S-1, Facebook's Initial Public Offering (IPO) method of valuation encompassed considering several objective and subjective factors to ascertain their best estimate of the fair value of their Class B common stock. The factors included latest private stock sale transactions, historical financial results and projected trends, and projections for Facebook's future financial performance. There was also

How Twitter Fooled Investors Into Paying 45 for IPO Stock
Words: 1942 Length: 7 Document Type: Corporate

TWITTER'S 2013 INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING Launched in 2006 with headquarters in San Francisco, Twitter (hereinafter alternately "the company") leveraged its increasingly popular social media platform into an impressively successful initial public offering (IPO) in 2013 that generated enormous attention from investors and media alike as well as $1.8 billion in capital through the planned sales of 70 million shares of stock for the company based on a closing stock price

Domino's Pizza
Words: 1611 Length: 4 Document Type: Business Plan

Business Plan Domino's Pizza, Inc. Domino's Pizza Management and Human Resources Organization structure. Domino's Pizza, Inc. was founded in 1960 and incorporated as Domino's Pizza, Inc. In 1965 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Domino's Pizza, Inc. issued an IPO in 2004 (Yahoo Finance, 2011); several international franchises (e.g., India, Australia) followed suit. The publicly owned company has ten principle subsidiaries (Pederson & Cengage, 2004). Domino's sells pizza and related food items through company-owned and

Marketing Men's Attire in New York City
Words: 5242 Length: 20 Document Type: Business Plan

Business Plan for Tailoring Workshop Company: A Tailor Shop on Wheels This business plan is for the Tailoring Workshop Company (hereinafter alternatively "the company"), a mobile tailor shop for men clothes that will have a Web site and a mobile app available through the Apple Store. The company will focus on tailoring men's suits only. Customers will be able to contact their personal tailor through the company's Web site or via

Hyde Piper Story: The Hyde Piper Is
Words: 2066 Length: 6 Document Type: Essay

Hyde Piper Story: The Hyde Piper is a residential-turned-industrial pipe cleaning and repair firm located in Hyde County, North Carolina. While the firm was initially a residential pipe cleaning and repair company, it changed its emphasis and relocated to Texas after receiving more requests for industrial applications. The management of the firm includes Will Drayne (principal owner), Harris Tock (Chief Financial Officer), and Conlan DeWitt (the vice president of marketing).

Sign Up for Unlimited Study Help

Our semester plans gives you unlimited, unrestricted access to our entire library of resources —writing tools, guides, example essays, tutorials, class notes, and more.

Get Started Now