Facebook, which increasingly has been experimenting with delivery of video-on-demand movies to its 800 million users, could file an IPO worth up to $10 billion in the second quarter of 2012, according to reports, placing the valuation of the social media giant at more than $100 billion.
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who in the past has expressed reluctance about going public, earlier this month acknowledged that Facebook was weighing an IPO, but a company yesterday declined to comment on yesterday's The Wall Street Journal report.
"We've made this implicit promise to our investors and to our employees that by compensating them with equity and by giving them equity, that at some point we're going to make that equity worth something publicly and liquidly, in a liquid way," he said. "Now, the promise isn't that we're going to do it on any kind of short-term time horizon. The promise is that we're going to build this company so that it's great over the long term, right. And that we're always making these decisions for the long term, but at some point we'll do that."
Speculation about a possible IPO has been rampant on Wall Street, as it has supported other Web offerings like that of Groupon earlier this month and LinkedIn in May.
The Journal, citing sources close to Facebook, said the company, which had estimated revenues of $4 billion, is discussing the timing of an IPO with the Securities and Exchange Commission and could still possibly file this year.
Because Facebook will have more than 500 shareholders by the end of the year, it will have to make its financial information public.
Fore more:
- see this WSJ article
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