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Facebook files for $US5b IPO, reveals financials

FACEBOOK REVENUE (PROFIT/LOSS*)
2004: $382,000 (no profit/loss figure reported)
2005: $9 million (no profit/loss figure reported)
2006: $48 million (no profit/loss figure reported)
2007: $153 million ($138 million loss)
2008: $272 million ($56 million loss)
2009: $777 million ($290 million profit)
2010: $1.97 billion ($606 million profit)
2011: $3.71 billion ($1 billion profit)

* all $USD

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Facebook has filed for a $US5 billion initial public offering, and revealed key financial details for the first time.

The social network's revenue rose 88% last year to $US3.71 billion.

Net income was $US1 billion, up from the prior year's $606 billion.

Founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg (27) holds 28.2% of shares.

Post-IPO, he stands to be worth somewhere in the region of $US28 billion.

The filing reveals several Facebook senior managers have healthy annual earnings, including COO Sheryl Sandberg - often described as Facebook's designated adult - who pocketed $US31 million in stock bonuses during 2011.

Morgan Stanley will be the lead under-writer.

The IPO will take place in the second quarter.

Facebook has yet to reveal if it will list on the NYSE or Nasdaq.

It is expected that the partial float will value the company at between $US75 and $US100 billion.

The vast majority of Facebook's revenue comes from advertising, according to the filing.

But the company also states that "In 2011, Zynga [which dominates Facebook gaming with titles like Farmville] accounted for approximately 12% of our revenue, which amount was comprised of revenue derived from payments processing fees related to Zynga’s sales of virtual goods and from direct advertising purchased by Zynga.

"Additionally, Zynga’s apps generate a significant number of pages on which we display ads from other advertisers."

RAW DATA: Facebook's SEC filing (Warning: the SEC sight was under heavy load Thursday morning NZ time as the filing was announced). 

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Comments and questions
6

Whats the current EBITDA x?
Any budding analysts wanna dig through the numbers?
How much goodwill (thin air) are investors buying?
Any projections?

Looks like an awful lot of hot air in that valuation going by the figures in this piece.

Roughly looks about 100 to 1

I think in order to really maximize revenues and future profits, Facebook is going to have to make changes that really piss off users. But if they do that - the whole thing might fall apart. It's really just up in the air on what will happen. If the stock opens and doubles immediately - the financials wouldn't back it up. If it doesn't, it would be considered a failure. The real wildcard here is that users are really starting to hate Facebook. That can't be discounted.

100bn valuation with 1bn net earnings!

even with hige levels of growth, in profit that is still crazy high.
Advertising and in-apppurchases can only take you so far, what are facebook's plans for future reveue (and profit) growth?

With there facebook connect login service to any website, they could become the defacto payment method for the web, taking over from paypal if they can implement a much easier to use system. That has the potential to be huge.

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