Facebook goes public

The world's largest social network could file for an IPO as early as Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reports. The placement could be the largest for an IT company in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. Find out more from Kommersant FM correspondent Andrei Zagorsky.

The placement will be organized by giant banks Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs. Experts believe that during the IPO, the social network can attract up to $10 billion with a total company valuation of $100 billion. A successful placement will help investors forget the sad story that happened to such IT giants as Groupon and online radio Pandora. Their shares, against the backdrop of an unfavorable market situation, fell sharply in price shortly after the companies went public. Facebook could thus provide a positive boost to the entire technology segment.

The chief asset manager of Aton Management, Evgeniy Tarubarov, believes that the Facebook placement is doomed to success, and after it the network will focus on projects that attract advertisers.

“The excitement was constantly fueled, and the placement will be very successful. From the point of view of where the funds raised can go, I think it would be logical if the network begins to develop its projects, within which more aggressive advertising may appear, and the bulk of the money will be spent on this.” , -- he said.

Not all experts assess the near future of Facebook exclusively positively. Some believe that the company's capitalization is significantly exaggerated. So the IPO may be successful, but subsequent events will disappoint investors, says Dmitry Dorofeev, senior analyst at the Ursa-Capital investment company.

"Overall, the service is overvalued. I don't think Facebook will be able to generate enough revenue to provide the current value. Most likely, this is a psychological bubble. Perhaps it will burst in the future, in the next five years," he said.

Until now, Facebook has not officially disclosed its financial results. However, she will have to do this before April of this year. The company has more than 500 private investors, and this, according to existing rules, makes the publication of information about income mandatory. According to unofficial data, the network earned $4 billion last year. The social network Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004. Now there are more than 800 million registered users, with about 500 million visiting the site daily. According to unofficial data, 10% of Facebook shares currently belong to the Digital Sky Technologies fund of Yuri Milner and Alisher Usmanov.

"Most likely this is a psychological bubble"