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Facebook is IPO Ready

Facebook’s long-awaited Initial Public Offering is happening in just two and a half weeks time, the Wall Street Journal reports Tuesday.

Citing the usual anonymous sources familiar with the matter, the Journal says Facebook will begin its IPO roadshow on Monday May 7. That’s when companies traditionally make the rounds of mutual funds, large banks and other major investors looking for multi-million dollar stakes. (We’ve reached out to Facebook for official confirmation.)

The name of the IPO roadshow game is to explain why your stock will be such a good buy, although in Facebook’s case that shouldn’t be too hard.

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg will only be present for some of the roadshow, say the sources; COO Sheryl Sandberg will handle the rest, along with CFO David Ebersman. (We’re hoping Sandberg still gets to finish work at 5:30pm.)

The roadshow will wrap up pretty quickly, and then it’s on to the IPO itself, apparently set for Friday May 18. As we’ve written before, the IPO should shift $10 billion worth of Facebook stock, leaving the social network with an overall valuation of $100 billion — and turning Zuckerberg, who owns a controlling stake of voting shares, into one of the world’s richest men.

Someone else who will be watching the IPO closely: Kevin Systrom, founder of Instagram. We’ve already noted that the $1 billion Facebook purchase of his app made Systrom worth $400 million on paper, but we’ve since learned that much of that $1 billion deal was for Facebook stock.

A wildly successful IPO could theoretically make Systrom a billionaire, albeit at a much lower level than Zuckerberg.

So now that it’s finally happening, what are your thoughts on the Facebook IPO? Will the social network be wildly overvalued, or find its true level? Let us know in the comments. (mashable)

Olympusweb commentary: Facebook has the option of staying private but everybody knows the big bucks is letting people buy pieces of your company and trade them like so many baseball cards.  Facebook doesn’t need the infusion of cash.  There is no doubt they will try to take over the cyber world much like Google has done with their many billions of dollars.

The truth: Because of hype and popularity the stock will soar and will be introduced and trade well above the actual value of the company. Stocks of this nature almost never reflect the real value of a company. People don’t care ,though, and in reality a stock is worth what people are willing to pay for it and like every public offering there is money to be made here.