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Was Facebook Right in Going Public

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Submitted By garima298
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Was Facebook right in going public?
8 years after its inception the leading social networking site Facebook (FB) went on to become public in 2012. It was one of the most awaited events of the business world and everyone had huge expectations from the stock. The IPO failed to meet these expectations and led the observers and analysts thinking whether this was a well thought through decision on the part of the Mark Zuckerberg’s team. The aim of this assignment is to analyse whether the decision was right or wrong.
Facebook’s Story till Now
Mark Zuckerberg started FB with his friends, which was launched as Facebook Inc. in 2004.There has been a constant rise in users’ traffic since its inception and had increased drastically in past 4 years. It started off as a closed network of friends which went on to have one billion active users as of September 2012 which made it a phenomenal success. It was a completely new experience for the users which played an instrumental role in its success.
These reasons make FB a very lucrative medium for companies to advertise their products and services to a vast gamut of potential and current consumers across geographies. FB does not need to hire people for its content which itself is user generated. Established brands become the revenue source for FB where they try to pull users through their advertisements. Smaller enterprises are also providing as well as finding business through and to FB respectively.
Facebook going Public
Knowing that its size it would be difficult to keep its financing private, FB went on to become public on May 18th, 2012 starting off with a floor price of $38. It was the most closely watched IPO after Google’s. Valued at $104 bn, it was comparable to Pespsi at $106 bn and was equal to the combined worth of Goldman Sachs and Nike. Zuckeberg’s in his letter at the time of IPO stated that one of the reasons that they were going public was that they wanted to provide their investors and employees equity and wanted to work hard to make it worth the stakes and efforts put by the both of them. FB made similar claims to its prospective investors as well. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing showed that Zuckerberg asked his salary to be reduced to $1 per year from the January 2013. There was a rise in number of shareholders as a large number of employees had their stakes in the firm because of which the SEC in a way made it necessary for FB to go public.

Going public has given FB the opportunity to grow faster and not to lose out in terms of time and ideas. The IPO lets the world know that how much money the company is making and how is it made. Also it makes the world aware of the company’s future plans and the risks taken by the company. IPO provides a much higher degree of transparency to the company which comes in conflict with mysteriousness of the company.
Results of the IPO

Source: http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/fb/stock-chart#.USDHt6XhKQI
The IPO started with a floor price of $38 and managed to close at a price of $38.23 at the end of the first trading day. This seemed to be a major setback for the much hyped FB stock. This may have seemed to be a perfect job done at the end of the investment bank but from the investor’s and company’s point of view this was a great debacle. Especially for large investors like mutual funds and hedge funds, who look for major gains on the first day itself were deterred from investing into the stock. This led to creation of a negative perception about the stock in the minds of the investors.
The business model of FB is based on advertising as a part of its pages and news feeds. These advertisements become annoying for users and therefore become a deterrent. There has been a major shift of users to FB’s mobile application which is not compatible for displaying advertisements and this is where it is losing out on large revenues. Another reason is the failure of other IPOs like Groupon, Twitter, etc have also created a fear in the minds of investors.
Final Take
The serious concern for investors is that despite rise in earnings the FB stock has been downgraded couple of times. The silver lining to the cloud is that most analysts give it a ‘Hold’ rating and think of it to be a long term stock. Also the consumer base of FB is gigantic which shows that FB is not a transient phenomenon and is here to stay. It may not be good trading stock currently but may reap good benefits in long run.
Other Players in the Market
As such there is no direct competition to FB but the business world has seen internet based technology public offerings which include stocks like Groupon and LinkedIn. The reception of these stocks by investors, have also in a way paved the path for the prices of the FB stock.
Groupon
Groupon issued its IPO in November 2011 an on the closing of second day of issue jumped by 31%. It proved to be much more successful than other technology stocks for the reason that the shares were issued to 500 chosen investors. Investors were chosen judiciously from the point of view of their long term investment. Even after this selection of investors Groupon prices have been decreasing sharply and have reached to a low of $6 in Feburary 2013.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn which went public in May 2011 saw a 171% rise in its first day price and closed at a 109% increase from the IPO price of $45 to around $95 by end of the day. LinkedIn was one if the first technology shares to go public and in way was a measure of the investor interest in other IPOs like Groupon, Facebook, Twitter etc. With a slight dip in 2012 the stock prices have been on a rise. The reason lies in the business model where premium subscription, hiring facilities and advertising prove to be a more sustainable business model which helps in achieving persistent revenues.

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