Alternative Market Briefing

GLG: Even at $100bn, Facebook looks under-valued

Friday, February 03, 2012

Benedicte Gravrand, Opalesque Geneva: Even if Facebook’s valuation may be higher than Google’s, it does not mean it is expensive, according to some, as the site’s revenue should rise with better paid advertising.

Facebook Inc., which filed for IPO on February 1st, may command a valuation more than five times higher than search engine operator Google Inc. as it seeks to raise $5bn in the world’s largest initial public offering (IPO) of an Internet company, says Bloomberg.

The famed social networking Internet site may be valued at as much as $100bn in the sale.

The eight-year old company hopes to raise as much as $10bn when it begins selling shares this spring, reports The WSJ. It produced a $1bn profit last year from $3.71bn in revenues – mainly from advertising. But apparently Facebook's founder, 27-year-old Mark Zuckerberg, is worried about how wealth and public scrutiny may change the company's culture (see his letter to prospective investors here). Facebook has 845 million users.

T. Rowe Price Group Inc., a large asset manager which apparently avoided the dot-com boom in th......................

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