Facebook plans to finally go public with an IPO date set to occur sometime in the second quarter of next year with a registration statement said to be in the works and expected to be filed by the close of December of this year.
The social networking giant plans to raise about $10bn from this move which will be the largest netted by any web based technology company and overall would increase the market valuation of Facebook up to a whopping $100 billion.
The IPO is targeted to go on the stock market sometime between the months of April and June in 2012 and has been long expected and awaited since LinkedIn Corp. broke the ice for social networks with its IPO offering in May. Since LinkedIn’s appearance a host of social media companies and internet companies have flooded the stock market including Renren, Pandora Media, and Zillow.
However, some companies that filed for IPOs chose to hold their offering due to the shaky nature of the global markets including Groupon the successful coupon site and Zynga the Facebook gaming start-up. LivingSocial is also planning to file for an IPO although its success may not be guaranteed as Groupon after delaying their offering did not list successfully and now plans to scale down.
Facebook is said to have about 800 million global users out of which a 500 million log in on a daily basis. In fact, it has even been able to disrupt the business plans of yahoo and Google making it a very strong online presence.
