Update: Learnvest has an interesting infographic on their post about the Facebook IPO and who owns Facebook. This data was gathered by the Wall Street Journal and the Guardian.
If you were like me this morning, you woke up early wondering if Facebook was eager enough to file their intent to go public at 9am EST. Sadly, here on the west coast, at 6am, there wasn’t a peep about it. My Twitter stream wasn’t flooded with people retweeting article after article from sites like TechCrunch, Mashable, All Things D, Pando Daily or even from MG Seigler. Turns out, as All Things D’s Kara Swisher so eloquently points out, there seems to be some sort of delay in the filing and everyone was just eager to find out when would Facebook decide to make the inevitable move.
Well wait no more, because as of a few minutes ago, Facebook just filed their Form S-1 registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public. Yes, that’s right…get ready folks because one of the largest social networks in the past few years is going to enter the world of the stock market and, if experts and analysts are correct, will become one of the largest publically traded companies in the world. And as a result, millionaires and maybe even billionaires will be made. Facebook has also enlisted the help of Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, and Goldman, Sachs & Co. to help them through this process.
Now that Facebook has officially filed its papers to go public, under the rules of the Securities Act of 1933, Facebook will need to wait until the SEC staff declares the registration statement effective. And we will basically see all sorts of news severely limited or blocked because laws are in place to limit what information Facebook and related parties are able to share with the public.
The company intends to raise $5 billion in their Initial Public Offering . In 2011, they received over $1 billion on sales of $3.7 billion with over 845 million monthly users. Where does all of this come from? Advertising and platform developer payments.
MSNBC has analyzed the filing and they are reporting:
Facebook’s billionaire chairman Mark Zuckerberg, 27, made $500,000 in base salary last year, plus a $220,000 first-half bonus, apparently making him the company’s highest-paid employee, at least in cash compensation, according to an initial look at the filing. His salary will go to a nominal $1 a year at his request effective in 2013, Facebook said in the filing.
The New York Times’ Bits blog has really scrutinized Facebook’s filing. In their post, they’ve posted some interesting tidbits:
Perhaps after the long-awaited filing for their IPO, analysts and the public are wondering what the recognized stock ticker symbol will be. The New York Times says that Facebook will seek to have “FB” for its shares. And there was rumors of a war between exchanges on who would receive Facebook’s prized listing? Well that remains unclear as the filing doesn’t mention it.
And if you don’t think that Facebook gives a damn about Google+, then you’re wrong. Claire Cain Miller from the NY Times reports that the filing has more space allotted to it and the social network states “we compete broadly with Google’s social networking offerings, including Google+, which it has integrated with certain of its products, including search and Android.” Will wonders never cease…this should make for an interesting competition both in the stock market and in the future who will come out victorious.
More about these fun facts can be found here.
Mashable has embedded the SEC filing on their site so I’m embedding it here for your convenience.
You can read the entire SEC filing here.
Photo Credit: Jeanette Runyon/Flickr
