WSJ says initial public offering could come next week; deal would likely raise $10B
Facebook Inc., the largest social-networking site, may file for its initial public offering on Feb. 1 and is close to hiring Morgan Stanley to handle the deal, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing unidentified people.
The company is considering a valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion, and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will probably play a “major role” in the IPO, the newspaper reported.
Facebook has been discussing raising $10 billion in a share sale that would value it at $100 billion, a person with knowledge of the matter told Bloomberg News in November. That would make it twice as valuable as it was in January 2011, when the company announced a $1.5 billion investment from Goldman Sachs and other backers.
Larry Yu, a spokesman for Menlo Park, California-based Facebook, declined to comment, as did representatives of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, both based in New York.
Co-founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 in a Harvard University dorm room, Facebook has amassed more than 800 million users with an easy-to-use website that lets anyone with an Internet connection construct profile pages, post video and photos and interact with friends. The company has nudged aside competitors such as MySpace Inc. and generates sales from advertisers as varied as AT&T Inc., Best Buy Co. and Sony Corp.
