The fever pitch of speculation building up to Facebook’s IPO less than a week ago has been replaced by doomsayers revelling in the 11 per cent price slump since Friday’s launch. Should Mark Zuckerberg and the rest of Facebook’s newly minted billionaire founders, and almost 1,000 paper millionaire employees, be concerned by the drop since listing? No, there are several reasons to be upbeat.
The doomsayers have loved the downward stock slide. Stories of the NASDAQ’s technology wobbles and Morgan Stanley having to keep the stock price up soon after its listing are what you’d expect. People love the fact that the bigger they are, the harder they fall.
But there are several reasons for Facebook’s stockholders to take heart.
Firstly, let’s not forget Facebook’s $38 listing price was well above its initial expectations. Only weeks before the May 18 IPO, it was forecast to sell 337.4 million shares for between $28 and $35 per share, raising between $9 bn and $12 bn.
Five days before the list date, it raised the total number of shares to 421.2 m and ended up listing at this much higher level – netting $16bn and giving it a market capitalisation of about $104bn at listing.
To put this into context, Google offered 19m shares in its 2004 IPO, listing at $85 per share. It raised $1.67bn on market capitalisation of US$23 bn.
This gave Google the war chest it needed to launch a vast slew of mergers and acquisitions in the following years, including the high-profile purchase of YouTube in 2007.
Facebook’s IPO has raised 10 times Google’s amount from the sale, with market capitalisation three times Google’s – giving a serious steroid boost to its M&A budget. Facebook’s pre-IPO purchase of Instagram will be the first of many, helping the world’s most well-known social networking site, cement its market-leading position.
Interesting research from boutique researcher WealthInsight, The Facebook Elite, suggests that even if Facebook’s IPO may be overpriced, it does not mean that the company is not highly valuable.
Facebook’s earnings were $972m for the 12 months up until March 2012. Off revenue of $4.0bn, this represents a high profit margin of 24 per cent, putting it in line with the likes of Apple (30 per cent) and Google (27 per cent).
Facebook also makes more money from advertising than any other website and accounts for 28 per cent of display ads seen online. As more and more advertising moves online, Facebook’s revenues will almost certainly increase. Facebook had 901 million monthly active users (MAUs) and an average of 526 million daily active users as of 31 March 2012, an increase of 33 per cent and 41 per cent, respectively, compared to March, 2011. At the same time, Facebook’s 60 per cent penetration rate of internet users in the US and 45 per cent penetration rate of the world’s 2 billion internet users, together suggest that Facebook’s user base still has significant room for growth.
Facebook’s stock price will continue to attract attention, and will no doubt suffer periodic dips. Google suffered a big drop in late 2008, but now sells for more than $600. Facebook’s stocks may have dipped, but they are likely to rise far further.
Nicholas Moody is the editor of Private Banker International at VRL Financial News. He has written more about Facebook’s recent venture here.
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