It’s finally here, the day we thought they would infinitely delay. That’s right, its IPO day for Facebook. At 11am this mourning shares of Facebook will begin striding on the Nasdaq stock exchange under the ticker symbol “FB”. The offering is hoping to raise about $16 billion. The company is valued at $104 billion.
It has been an interesting week for investors who are hoping to grab a piece of the social network giant and it began early Monday when it was already clear that demand for shares had already outweighed the supply. In fact, Friday afternoon brokers were already calling around trying to find more shares. Essentially, Facebook was ready to close the book on the whole affair by Tuesday.
Then the inevitable happened and Facebook and their underwriters decided to make over 50 million more shares available. Not only did they decide to make more available, they also decided to increase the price range, and why not? They increased it from $28 to $34 to $34 to $38.
Of course, then early investors and Facebook insiders decided it was a good time to offer up some of their shares as well. Folks like PayPal’s Peter Thiel, Tiger Global Management, and Accel Partners all offered some of their shares to increase the available units by almost 25%.
There’s no word out there about if any of these shares are still available or if they have all been spoken for. I suspect if you want a piece of Facebook it will be hard to come by. Regardless, the trading will begin in less than two hours and the magic number will be $38.
Check back here all day for more news on the Facebook IPO and pretty much all things Facebook as the day progresses.