What a week. After eight years, Mark Zuckerberg takes Facebook public at a $104 billion valuation. His longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan gets her medical degree from the UC San Francisco. He has his 28th birthday.
And to top it all off, they get married today! Mazel tov. → Read More
Facebook’s IPO was obviously the single most discussed topic on Twitter today. The good folks over at social media data platform DataSift monitored what Twitter users were saying about the IPO throughout the day and came up with some interesting conclusions. Turns out, the ups and downs of how Twitter’s users felt about the stock pretty much mirrored the price of Facebook’s stock as the day progressed. → Read More
Just after the markets closed on its first day of public trading, Facebook amended its S-1 with a complete prospectus detailing how much stock each underwriter got to sell. Morgan Stanley, the lead-left bank, received 162.1 million shares ($6.15 billion worth) followed by J.P. Morgan with 84.8 million ($3.22 billion), and Goldman Sachs pulled down 63.1 million shares ($2.4 billion). → Read More
Mark Zuckerberg’s remote ringing of the opening bell and Facebook’s initial stock trades were a bit anti-climactic in person at the NASDAQ Marketsite in New York City, as we’ve written — NASDAQ is a digital exchange after all, so there’s not too much to see visually.
But being there was still a great opportunity to talk all things Facebook with David Kirkpatrick, the NYC-based founder of Techonomy, Fortune Magazine alum, and bestselling author of the book “The Facebook Effect — The Inside Story Of The Company That Is Connecting The World.” So we were happy to have Kirkpatrick join TechCrunch TV for an interview on the floor of the NASDAQ Marketsite. → Read More
The underwriters of Facebook’s $16 billion debut on NASDAQ fought to the finish to keep the company’s shares above last night’s final price of $38 a share. Shares closed at $38.23 today. Sources tell us that the syndicate of banks underwriting the deal have been putting in buy orders to keep its price afloat. For Facebook itself, it’s actually a great outcome as the company didn’t leave any money on the table. But bankers on the wealth-management side of the underwriters are sure to be unhappy. Plus, the company’s tepid premiere is killing the performance of tech stocks across the board.
Basically, what we hear is that the underwriters including Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, got too pushy in the final days before the IPO about pricing. Earlier this month, the company was slated to open at a $28 to 35 price range, but that range was pushed up to $34 to 38 a share. Then Facebook priced at the very high end at $38 last night.
“The only thing keeping it at $38 are support mechanisms,” a source tells us. “There just wasn’t the institutional investor demand that people thought there would be.” They added that about 20 percent of buying orders seem to be coming from retail investors (e.g. regular people), which is “unprecedented.” → Read More
In case there was any confusion after Facebook’s eight years in business and its recent geographic expansions, it was cleared up today: Facebook’s home and heart lies in Silicon Valley.
TechCrunch TV saw that first-hand this morning at NASDAQ’s Marketsite in New York City’s Times Square. We were on hand there for the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, but as expected, Facebook’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg took advantage of the option to ring it remotely from his company’s Menlo Park, California headquarters. → Read More
Facebook, which has now listed on NASDAQ, is set to make $16 billion if its share holds at the $38 price that it set yesterday — more if it ends higher. Here’s a coincidence: that’s just north of the total amount in damages, $15 billion, that a new class-action case is seeking against the social network over privacy invasion.
Filed in U.S. Federal Court in San Jose, California, the case (embedded below) combines 21 separate cases that have been filed in different courts in the U.S. in 2011 and 2012 — as the plaintiffs look for strength in numbers. All of the cases are connected to “Internet tracking,” or how Facebook tracks users when they are browsing the wider web outside of Facebook’s own pages, even after they have logged out of Facebook.
Facebook has already responded to the case with a flat statement of denial of guilt. “We believe this complaint is without merit and we will fight it vigorously,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch.
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If only Facebook IPO day were a little less of a snoozefest than it is now. If only it had Zuckerberg impaling investors while riding a bull rampaging through a city. Or an elevator to space. Or Zuckerberg bouncing Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar off a giant scale. But sadly, our surrealist dreams will never be realized.
We will just have to settle for the ho-hum performance of Facebook’s shares so far. In the meantime, you can watch this re-enactment from NMA TV or Next Media Animation, that Taiwanese animation subsidiary that riffs off current events with 3D animated videos that look like what the lovechild of Salvador Dali and Reddit would make. Oh, and did we mention that their parent company invests in tech startups too? → Read More
Well, they warned us.
Yesterday, Facebook PR was telling reporters that when the company went public this morning, there wouldn’t be much to see at the Menlo Park headquarters. Nonetheless, I made the drive down from San Francisco, and I wasn’t alone. When I arrived at around 6:30am Pacific, the small parking lot set aside for reporters and news vans was already full. Facebook provided coffee and breakfast, as well as a portable bathroom. → Read More
Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg received a commemorative hoodie from the NASDAQ CEO Bob Greifeld and thanked his site’s users in opening remarks recorded before he rang the NASDAQ opening bell this morning.
In his short speech which you can watch below, Zuckerberg said:
“I just want to say a few things, and then we’ll ring this bell and we’ll get back to work. Right now this all seems like a big deal. Going public is an important milestone in our history. But here’s the thing: our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected. In the past eight years, all of you out there have built the largest community in the history of the world. You’ve done amazing things that we never would have dreamed of and I can’t wait to see what you’re all going to do going forward.
So on this special day, on behalf of everyone at Facebook, I just want to say to all the people out there who use Facebook and our products, thank you. So let’s do this! [Rings bell] This is an awesome moment. Remember, stay focused and keep shipping” Watch the video here… → Read More
Why is there nothing but Facebook IPO news today, you (Facebook haters) may be asking? Well, outside of the obvious – people are obsessed, this is a historic event, it’s the biggest tech IPO over, etc., etc. – there’s another reason why all the news outlets are publishing Facebook this and Facebook that today. It’s because everyone else is holding their news for a later date….the result of which has led to a historic event of my own: inbox zero.
So this is what it’s like not being a tech blogger? → Read More
Facebook shares opened at $42.05, a 10.5 percent increase from its final price last night at $38. Shares are actually currently almost flat at $39.16, which is 3.6 percent higher than $38 the price that underwriters settled on last night. While it may not be as juicy a story, it’s a signal that Facebook’s IPO was priced pretty efficiently and that the company didn’t leave too much money on the table.
Right now, retail investors are getting their hands on the shares. The company’s first trade was actually delayed by 30 minutes on NASDAQ as market makers had issues settling on an opening price. They kept delaying the opening in five-minute increments, which isn’t all that uncommon in popular offerings, according to a conversation we had with Bruce Aust, who is NASDAQ’s executive vice president and head of the global corporate client group, earlier today.
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Facebook’s opening trade on NASDAQ has been delayed. We don’t know why, but we’re hearing mixed reports involving both unexpectedly high demand from retail investors and problems with canceling orders. As we explained in a post about 20 minutes ago, the underwriters of the deal are meeting and trying to set an opening price.
But because of unexpected changes in demand, it seems market makers are having issues settling on an opening price. They have the option of delaying the offering in five-minute increments until they can find a final price. → Read More
Trading has now begun on Facebook after a bit of a hiccup with NASDAQ, and while the numbers are nowhere near the heady heights of $70-$100 that some people were murmuring earlier, the $42.05 opening figure is still 10 percent higher than the $38-per-share price set by Facebook yesterday.
At the time of this writing, it is trading a bit lower, at $40.75, which gives the company about a $111 billion valuation. In Facebook’s S-1, the company listed how many shares main players were set to sell at listing time. Based on the originally sale price of $38 and then Facebook’s current price at $40.75, here are how the values are coming out. The first number is the value of the shares they sold, and the second is the value of their remaining stake in the company: → Read More
Today’s Facebook IPO is a momentous, historical occasion. It’s set to be the biggest tech IPO ever, and the third largest IPO in U.S. history, second only to Visa and General Motors. The company that was once just a glimmer in the eye of a Harvard student named Mark Zuckerberg raised over $16 billion yesterday as shares were gobbled up by hungry investors, and that $38 share price point is expected to increase as the stock starts trading around 11am today.
Do you know how much money that is? → Read More
Facebook shares are supposed to go live on the NASDAQ market in about 20 minutes. But what happens in the next crucial 15?
We caught up with NASDAQ’s Bruce Aust, who is the executive vice president and head of the global corporate client group there. After several years of carefully courting the company’s management, NASDAQ beat out rival New York Stock Exchange for Facebook’s hand. NASDAQ is usually is the exchange of choice for most tech companies like Google and Apple, but NYSE has snuck away with a company or two in the last year like LinkedIn.
Companies generally go live after market opening at around 10:30 or 11 a.m. Eastern, he said. About 15 minutes before shares start trading (e.g. right now!), the underwriters of Facebook’s offering like the offering’s lead Morgan Stanley get together and discuss current market orders, he said. → Read More
Another startup cashing in (figuratively speaking) on the FB IPO: StockTwits. Earlier this week, the social network for investors added Facebook to its StockTwits Social Heatmap, a feature on the site that provides a visualization of what the StockTwits some 200,000 investors and traders are talking about. Usually, the heatmap looks looks like a bunch of little squares – the bigger the square means more conversation.
But today, Facebook ($FB) is dominating, even pushing fan favorite $AAPL aside. → Read More
This is awesome. At 9:30 AM ET, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg posted what’s bound to be a historical status update to his Facebook Timeline. The post simply reads: “Mark Zuckerberg listed a company on NASDAQ. — with Chris Cox and 4 others.” You can read the whole story right here from the engineer who rigged up the auto-post: “How Facebook Hacked The NASDAQ Button”
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Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg didn’t travel to New York’s Times Square for the company’s big day. He did it unconventionally like you’d expect a hacker would. He opened the bell remotely from the company’s Menlo Park Headquarters after Facebook employees had just finished a long, all-night Hackathon — their 31st. They played midnight hockey and worked on extra projects, as you can see from photos we re-posted here.
Just ahead of the 6:30 PST open, the company’s employees got together again in the main headquarters “Hacker Square” in front of a big stage where he rang the bell. Unlike Zynga CEO Mark Pincus in last December’s IPO, Zuckerberg didn’t give any remarks. He was flanked by chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, vice president of product Chris Cox and Elliot Schrage, who is Facebook’s vice president of public policy and communications. A Facebook engineer named David Garcia had hacked the NASDAQ button to auto-post the bell opening to Zuckerberg’s Timeline (and we have the inside scoop on how he did it!) → Read More
Editor’s note: Some savvy Facebook engineers rigged the NASDAQ button to automatically post “Mark Zuckerberg has listed a company on NASDAQ – FB” to the CEO’s Timeline as he rung the bell to open the NASDAQ’s day of trading. David Garcia, a senior software engineer at Facebook, explains how they turned the NASDAQ on to Open Graph.
It was a normal Monday. Nothing out of the ordinary other than that Facebook was set to go public at the end of the week. Camera crews were beginning to appear and NASDAQ was coming to campus so we could ring the opening bell together. Other than that, it was like any other Monday. → Read More
San Francisco, CA
