Jun 13, 2011
The growing social networking behemoth, Facebook, Inc, will likely go public in the first quarter of 2012 with a valuating that could top $100 billion, according to people familiar with the matter cited in a CNBC report.
One factor in the timing of the company's IPO is the Securities and Exchange Commission's requirement that companies must disclose financial information if they have more than 500 private investors.
Facebook, which is approaching 700 million registered users, is also facing pressure from current employees who, because of internal restrictions, cannot sell their private shares on the secondary market, according to the unnamed sources.
SharesPost, a private exchange that buys and sells shares of non-public companies, last sold 100,000 shares of the company for $3.4 million, putting Facebook's valuation at $85 billion.
In March, the investment firm General Atlantic bought one tenth of one percent of Facebook, valuing the company at $65 billion, and the Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) deal worth $1.5 billion just six weeks before that valued the company at $50 billion, meaning the value of the social networking website had grown 30% in that short time.
Meanwhile, the company reported user losses in several key markets, including a drop of 6 million in the United States and 1.5 million in Canada. User counts also dropped by over 100,000 in the UK, Norway, and Russia, according to Inside Facebook.
It has been noted that once Facebook reaches around 50% of the total population in a given country, growth generally slows to a halt. Facebook still added 11.8 million users overall in May, driven by strong growth in Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, Argentina, India, Colombia and the Philippines. Last year, the typical growth rate was about 20 million users per month.
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