Facebook Inc. filed for an initial public offering Wednesday (1 February) that could value the social network between $75bn and $100bn.
The IPO will almost certainly be one of the biggest ever in the US as the social network company aims to raise as much as $10bn.
Potential buyers got their first look at the company’s financials on Wednesday, which showed the company produced a $1bn profit last year from $3.71bn in revenues.
Some 85 percent of those revenues are generated from advertising, with the remainder from social gaming and other fees.
Facebook’s offering will eclipse Google Inc.’s 2004 IPO, the largest US Internet IPO to date, raising $1.9bn at a valuation of $23bn. In the US only Visa Inc., General Motors Co. and AT&T Wireless have held larger offerings than $10bn.
In the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook said it is seeking to raise $5 billion, but that figure is likely to grow.
The IPO could also yield around $100m in fees for Wall Street banks managing the offering, including J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs.
The company has yet to decide whether it will trade on the New York Stock Exchange or Nasdaq Stock Market.
Facebook investors include Elevation Partners, Meritech Capital and Accel Partners.
The Facebook IPO was been long anticipated and widely expected to be a record breaking public sale for an internet company. It follows IPOs from LinkedIn, Groupon and Facebook game developer Zynga. ACQ Magazine looked at internet IPOs in the July 2011 issue and you can read the feature here.
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