Facebook’s Offering Next Year Could Raise $10 Billion, Valuing Company at $100 Billion

Facebook’s Offering Next Year Could Raise $10 Billion, Valuing Company at $100 Billion

The social networking firm is now targeting a time frame of April to June 2012 for an initial public offering, said people familiar with the matter. The company is exploring raising $10 billion in its IPO—what would be one of the largest offerings ever—in a deal that might assign Facebook a $100 billion valuation, a number greater than twice that of such stalwarts as Hewlett-Packard Co. and 3M Co.

The most recent IPO, an $805 million float of discount-deal service Groupon Inc. on Nov. 3, has plummeted 42% in price in the past five trading days after surging in its first day of trading. Business-networking service LinkedIn Corp., whose stock more than doubled from its IPO price on its first day of trading May 19, has since fallen 36%, but remains 33% above its IPO.

Facebook is not the same as Groupon, or even Linked In (not to put both companies in the same category together). Facebook has a real business model, and a vision regardless of the fact that you might disagree with it.

It would be interesting to see how the Facebook IPO is going to affect their talent acquisition.