ipo

When Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers partner Mary Meeker was asked about Facebook's IPO during an interview at the D10 Conference today, she pointed to a key problem: that Facebook's shares were trading on the private market at $104 billion valuation before the company went public.

Actually, they shares traded even higher than that as the anticipation and hype surrounding the giant IPO neared.

Facebook was the most active stock on SecondMarket, an exchange for shares in private companies. And plenty of hedge funds and other big money managers were scooping up shares there -- often at prices far … Read more

Facebook briefly hit another low today before rebounding.

Facebook's shares are up 0.7 percent to $29.05, up slightly from an earlier low of $28.25. Despite the slight gain, the stock is down nearly a quarter from its offering price of $38.

It's been a tumultuous ride for Facebook's stock and for any shareholders stuck with the stock at its offering price. Its first full week of trading ranked it as the worst performing IPO in a decade, and the stock fell below $30 for the first time yesterday.

The declines have largely stemmed from … Read more

Is Facebook a dead social network walking?

By now you all know the sad tale of Facebook's sinking IPO and the ongoing questions about who is to blame for pumping up the social network's stock valuation and then skittering away at the first sign of actual trading.

Regardless of who got played in the deal (read: small investors, as usual), the market is actually responding appropriately to Facebook's current situation: the site is a behemoth of traffic and attention, a platform underlying the very fabric of the Web, and an indispensable part of the lives of millions, … Read more

Instagram founder and CEO Kevin Systrom might be wishing he'd taken more cash and less stock when he struck that $1 billion deal with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

No one is going to shed a tear for Systrom, who's going to make a fortune off his popular, money-losing app no matter how this plays out. But as investors again drove down Facebook's stock again today, the much talked about acquisition is suddenly worth a decidedly less cool $963 million.

When Systrom and Zuckerberg were working out terms for the deal, Systrom reportedly asked for $2 billion. But … Read more

Facebook's shareholders can't catch a break.

The company's stock today is trading down to $29.44, shedding $2.46, or about 8 percent, of its market-opening price. The decline comes the same day trading on Facebook was opened to the options market. According to Dow Jones, about 162,000 Facebook options were traded by 9 a.m. PT this morning.

Facebook's continuing decline has struck fear among investors, who wonder how low the company's shares might fall. Facebook went off earlier this month at $38, only to watch its stock plummet in subsequent days. At … Read more

Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin says he bears no resentment against Mark Zuckerberg for being forced out of the company and even goes so far to call the social network's CEO a "visionary."

"I have only good things to say about Mark, there are no hard feelings between us," Saverin said in an extensive interview with Brazilian publication Veja, according a Forbes translation. "He was a visionary, he always knew that the only way to get Facebook to grow was to maintain its central idea, that of people truly presenting themselves as they are, without … Read more

You didn't really want to start partying again like it was 1999, did you? Good thing, too. Because you aren't going to get the chance -- not just yet, at least.

Before last Friday, many thought that Facebook's much-hyped IPO might trigger a reprise of the Internet mania unleashed by Netscape's 1995 public offering, when "companies" -- some with little more than a dot-com suffix and marketing spiel -- were able to lure investors en masse.

And just as in the run-up to the great tech bust, some saw history repeating itself, what with … Read more

Based on the first five days of trading, the IPO did even worse than MS Global, a company that is now in bankruptcy, markets reporter Sheila Dharmarajan said on Bloomberg TV today.

"It really goes to show the magnitude of the flop of the Facebook IPO," she said.

Facebook's stock has been nothing but a headache for the company since it went public on Friday. After a bungled first day of trading on the Nasdaq exchange, shares have fallen considerably … Read more

As Facebook's stock started its first week of trading, there were some startling allegations as to why the stock was tanking.

Facebook itself may be responsible for investors' tepid response to the social network's stock, which has been mostly falling since it went public on May 18. (As of Friday morning, Facebook shares were bouncing around the $32 level, down about 16 percent from the $38 IPO pricing.)

Initially, it looks like Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter on the massive offering, was to blame for allegedly telling major clients it had reduced its revenue forecast for the company, … Read more