Facebook's share price gets a 5 percent boost

For the first time in four days, the downward trend in the social network's stock turns around, rising by $1.41 per share. Still, it's a far cry from when the company went public.

by Dara Kerr

May 31, 2012 9:42 PM PDT Follow @darakerr

It's not quite time to pop those champagne corks yet, but things for Facebook have taken a slight turn for the better as trading closed today.

The social network's stock was up by 5 percent after four straight days of losses, according to Reuters. Yesterday the market closed with Facebook's stock at $28.19, but today it rose by $1.41 to close at $29.60.

This is still a far cry from the initial starting price of $38 per share when the company started trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market two weeks ago.

Ever since Facebook went public, it's been a bumpy road with the daily financial forecasts looking ever-bleaker. That's on top of shareholder lawsuits alleging that the social network misled clients about Facebook's revenue growth and withheld certain material information prior to the $16 billion IPO.

As Facebook's price has declined over the past few days, so too has its market capitalization. When the company went public, its market value was about $104 billion and now it's hovering around $63 billion. That means a loss of $41 billion in just two weeks.