Internet, Facebook Ipo | featured news

How to put all this into a Facebook valuation? To justify the big numbers being tossed around – $100bn and up – several things must happen in the next five to seven years. The business needs to become much less capital intensive (inclusive of acquisitions) over time, as Google and Microsoft have done. That is the easy part. But margins must also stay near today’s level of about 50 per cent – which would be uncharted territory. And sales would have to grow at least sixfold in this period.

Facebook Inc. is planning to set the price range for its impending initial public offering in the high-$20s to mid-$30sa share, valuing itself at roughly $85 billion to $95 billion...

Facebook will go public on May 18, a published report says, in one of the most highly anticipated tech initial public offerings since Google went public in August 2004.

Despite rumors of delays, Facebook could begin its roadshow as soon as early next week, according to two people briefed on the company's plans.

Facebook’s market debut has been expected to be in mid- to late May, but a report from CNBC indicates that the process could take a little longer than analysts expected. The report, citing unnamed “people familiar with the matter,” pinpoints June as the new expected time range for the IPO and says Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has been so busy with business and acquisitions that the company hasn’t had time to put the final touches on its prep for going public.

Facebook Inc reported its first quarter-to-quarter revenue slide in at least two years, a sign that the social network's sizzling growth may be cooling as it prepares to go public in the biggest ever Internet IPO.

Facebook Inc. is already trading like a public company as insiders and wealthy investors use private marketplaces to buy and sell stock in the social- networking company ahead of its initial offering.

Without the free content created by its 850 million users, Facebook would surely not be on the verge of a multibillion-dollar initial public offering.

For all the huge numbers in Facebook's IPO papers, a surprisingly small figure stands out: $4.39, the amount the site generated per user last year....