Facebook IPO?

dascrow · May 18, 2012

Anyone purchase Facebook stock today?

The big news of the day is now officially out. Facebook's IPO was launched and priced out at $38, with a valuation set at $104 billion. Mark Zuckerberg himself rang the NASDAQ bell to start the trading day off with the big announcement. But, of course, he and the rest of his team at Facebook couldn't just do it the old fashioned way. They are code-junkies and hackers, after-all. So, they did things a little differently. One was pretty simple. Without a word, he rang the bell remotely from his company's headquarters (normally new IPO's will go to New York to ring it in person, although not always, so he was not the first to do this). Second, and this it where things get more interesting... beforehand, his team of engineers at the HQ found a way to hack the remote NASDAQ button, so that at the exact moment he hit the button to ring the bell, it would post the story to his Facebook timeline to let his friends and subscribers know.

http://www.droidforums.net/forum/dr...cebook-third-largest-ipo-opening-history.html

2WheelPhoto · May 18, 2012

I was on a plane today when the shares opened this morning but I wasn't touching that stock anyway, my financial advisor had warned me unless the shares were bought pre-IPO there wouldn't be a lot of money to be made.

sm4him · May 18, 2012

[sarcasm]What? FB went public? You'd think the media would have mentioned that.[/sarcasm]

:lmao:

No, I didn't buy any FB stock. FB has already sucked hours of my life away, I'm not giving it my money, too.

In a few years, perhaps I'll regret that decision. But I doubt it. That's not to say FB won't still be around, or that the stock won't be worthwhile, just to say I don't really give a rat's behind about it. :lol:

mjhoward · May 18, 2012

Lets see....

AAPL's Trailing P/E is 13.00 which is fairly typical of a tech stock. By comparison, MSFT is around 15.00.

FB on the other hand is a staggering 89.50!!! That is pretty much unheard of. The part that makes it even more ridiculous is that companies like AAPL and MSFT have products and perfectly valid expectations of growth. The only way FB can increase revenues any further is by charging its members, in which case everyone will flee faster than the NFLX debacle. If I were still swing trading, I would short FB and not think twice about it. It is currently worth no more than ~$6.5/shr and that is if you give them the benefit of assuming growth potential equal to AAPL.

Scuba · May 18, 2012

Yeah I won't be purchasing any of FB....I think they have already hit their peak. They already have 900 million users I don't see that growing, and I read that the China market is blocked for them so there goes 20% of the remaining population. I think FB will have to come up with something new to produce any growth. If they start charging many people will just run to google+ or something new will pop up.

Derrel · May 18, 2012

MJ, Facebook's "product" is the fantastically-detailed, intimate, deep and wide, data-mined-to-a-fare-thee-well dossier that they have compiled on millions of individual users, complete with zip codes and lots of up-to-date personal information. Facebook's ability to deliver spot-on, highly-targeted and PERSONALIZED and time-relevant advertising delivery at reasonable cost and with exceedingly high user-relevance is simply UN-MATCHED by almost any other company in the world. Of course, it might not appear that way to the casual observer, but FB's data-mining and advertisement delivery capabilities are staggering. The "eyeballs" FB can deliver to advertisers, with guaranteed precision and end-user relevance, is a product that basically, NO other company can offer. At least that I can think of. Of course, it's all disguised as a social networking site...but the personal information and the comments, likes, and sites and applications visited by millions of users are data-mined and turned into pure gold by Facebook.

mjhoward · May 18, 2012

Derrel, I understand what their 'product' is. A significant portion of their revenue is also generated by Zynga games. The problem is that I believe they have exhausted any growth in the area. They have $3B+ in advertising revenue. How can they increase this by more than 30 times?!? Especially without making the site extremely obnoxious to use? The other issue is that, as effective as they want those kinds of ads to be, they just aren't. Look at GM, they just pulled their advertising contract recently and cited ineffectiveness as the reason. Fact is, most facebook users never even see the ads because they employ ad blocking software (free).

Derrel · May 18, 2012

mjhoward said:
Lets see....

AAPL's Trailing P/E is 13.00 which is fairly typical of a tech stock. By comparison, MSFT is around 15.00.

FB on the other hand is a staggering 89.50!!! That is pretty much unheard of. The part that makes it even more ridiculous is that companies like AAPL and MSFT have products and perfectly valid expectations of growth. The only way FB can increase revenues any further is by charging its members, in which case everyone will flee faster than the NFLX debacle. If I were still swing trading, I would short FB and not think twice about it. It is currently worth no more than ~$6.5/shr and that is if you give them the benefit of assuming growth potential equal to AAPL.

I didn't agree with either of your state premises....that Apple and Microsoft have "products" and that by implication or by extension, that FB has no products....nor that there is only "one way" FB can increased revenues--specifically "only by charging its members"...neither of those assertions is valid, IMHO. Any time somebody says that there is only "one way" to do anything, I do not agree...

As far as ad-blocking software...there are ways around that which the FB people could use to deliver advertising messages, such as ads in image format!!!

Scuba · May 18, 2012

I agree with you Derrel about the percision advertising that can be done. However, I think the face that GM or GE (can't remember which) just pulled their ads due to lack of response causes some concern for me. Honestly, I will know sooner or later how well it works as I am getting ready to do FB ads, for my office (Chiropractic office). The ability to target my specific zip codes and demographics is amazing and like you said at a reasonable cost. This is certainly where they have the advantage if they can keep it working. If large companies start to drop out it will likely cause issues for them. The funny thing is I am one of those people with the ad blockers so I never see ads. You should have seen the face of the online ad sales women when I told her I don't ever see ads because of my free program that blocks them. Lets just say it was priceless. How does someone in that job now know about ad blockers....FAIL

GeorgieGirl · May 18, 2012

I like FB alot as a simple user, but I don't think they 'sell' anything that provides a service that generates revenue that satisfies a 'buy'. The advertisers that have supported the site are the ones at risk as in the recent analysis their efforts have gone under utilized. So I think this is a non-event (or a bad buy) but for the hype and I hope that it all works out for FB and anyone else who is invested.

Josh220 · May 18, 2012

Facebook will be the next MySpace soon enough. Why invest in something that will inevitably fail? Is it annoyingly epidemic now? Sure. Will it be in a few years? Not likely. These things are the epitome of fads.

mjhoward · May 21, 2012

mjhoward said:
Lets see....

AAPL's Trailing P/E is 13.00 which is fairly typical of a tech stock. By comparison, MSFT is around 15.00.

FB on the other hand is a staggering 89.50!!! That is pretty much unheard of. The part that makes it even more ridiculous is that companies like AAPL and MSFT have products and perfectly valid expectations of growth. The only way FB can increase revenues any further is by charging its members, in which case everyone will flee faster than the NFLX debacle. If I were still swing trading, I would short FB and not think twice about it. It is currently worth no more than ~$6.5/shr and that is if you give them the benefit of assuming growth potential equal to AAPL.

FB: Summary for Facebook, Inc.- Yahoo! Finance