Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for (if you’re a tech blogger or investor, that is). Facebook has filed to go public to the tune of $5 billion.
Just before 5 pm ET on Wednesday, the world’s most popular social network filed its prospectus (S-1 form) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the necessary documentation to take the private company public. The S-1 reveals a wealth of data about Facebook that had previously only been speculated or hinted at by the company.
But also missing were some key points, including which stock exchange Facebook intends to trade on and when it actually intends to make shares publicly available (the IPO process typically takes up to 12 weeks, so May is a likely date). Facebook declined to provide that information in its initial prospectus.
An overwhelming number of users to the SEC website in the immediate minutes after the Facebook S-1 filing resulted in intermittent access. TPM was able to access the filing, though. Here are the salient points:
Facebook priced its IPO at $5 billion, or $0.000006 par value per share (the minimum price per share Facebook will sell. It will obviously be much higher than this when it actually hits the market).
Facebook intends to begin selling shares of its stock “as soon as practicable.”
Facebook’s lead underwriter is Morgan Stanley, followed by JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and Allen & Company, in that order.
Facebook reported revenue of $3.7 billion for all of 2011, compared to $1.9 billion a year before and just $777 million in 2009.
Facebook stated “In 2009, 2010, and 2011, advertising accounted for 98%, 95%, and 85%, respectively, of our revenue. As is common in the industry, our advertisers typically do not have long-term advertising commitments with us…Our advertising revenue could be adversely affected by a number of other factors.”
Facebook has $3.9 billion in cash or liquid assets.
Facebook reported 845 million monthly active users in December 2011, an increase of 39 percent from the year before.
Facebook reported 2.7 billion “Likes” and comments per day on average during the fourth quarter of 2011.
Facebook reported 425 million monthly active users on mobile devices during the same period.
