The company filed for an initial public offering and disclosed its financials. Many analysts in the West considered the social network to be overvalued. Russian colleagues agree with them and do not advise investors to buy Facebook shares.

Facebook is preparing for the largest IPO in Internet history. On the night of February 2, the social network submitted a preliminary application for an initial public offering of its shares on the stock exchange. This IPO should be one of the key events in the Internet industry in 2012. The company plans to raise over $5 billion. It will be possible to buy shares in the spring; analysts predict an unprecedented rush. However, there is no need to rush to buy the Internet giant's shares, says O'Shaughnessy Asset Management analyst Dick O'Shaughnessy.

“Very often, when entering an IPO, companies turn out to be too overvalued. Before the placement, the price of the securities is inflated several times, but investors are willing to pay any money to buy these shares,” he noted.

Previously, the company's financial performance was kept secret, but has now become known thanks to its IPO application.

Based on the IPO application, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg owns about 28% of the shares, among other shareholders are the Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s fund – 5.5%, Accel Partners – 11.4%, as well as social network co-founder Dustin Moskovitz –– 7.6%.

The social network's profit in the first nine months of 2011 amounted to $714 million; revenue for the entire year exceeded $3.7 billion, of which 85% was generated through advertising. The official salary of Zuckerberg himself also became known. In 2011, the founder of Facebook received $500 thousand, and from 2013 the base salary will be 1 US dollar.

Russian analysts agree with Western analysts; in their opinion, Facebook shares may now be too expensive. The head of the analytical department of Management Company "Bin Finam Group" Georgy Voronkov advises buying securities of other Internet companies.

“Facebook, if we take into account that its profit for 2011 was in the region of a billion dollars, then, accordingly, the P/E ratio is 100. Buying at this price is a fairly generous premium. Hand on heart, I would Russian investors I didn’t recommend participating in an IPO. I think it still makes sense to look for undervalued assets, take a closer look at the shares of Google, which is launching its own social network, which at some point will become a driver for the disclosure of internal value, growth of quotes. And secondly, let’s say the Mail company. .ru Group,” he noted.

Until now, the record among public Internet companies in terms of the amount of funds raised through an IPO was held by Google: by placing shares in August 2004, the company raised $1.67 billion. Second place in the “hit parade” is occupied by the Russian company Yandex, which raised $1.3 billion in May 2011.

Nikita Batalov

IPO "declassified" Facebook's performance