It is strongly rumoured that Facebook – the Social Networking behemoth – is all set to go public and launch an initial public offering (IPO). The Wall street Journal stated that the public offering of stock may take place around April 2012.
Facebook has however declined to confirm or refute the reports. Larry Yu, a spokesman of Facebook said: “We are not going to participate in speculation about an IPO.”
It doesn’t really come as a bolt from the blue because, on 7th November, Marck Zuckerbeg, the Chief Executive and co-founder of Facebook, said in a PBS Television interview that Facebook would make an initial pubic offering (of stock) sometime though they were in no hurry about it.
He said: “A big part of being a technology company is getting the best engineers and designers and talented people around the world.” and went on to add: “And one of the ways that you can do that is you compensate people with equity or options.”
He further said: “At some point we’re going to make that equity worth something publicly and liquidly, in a liquid way.” He added: “Now, the promise isn’t that we’re going to do it on any kind of short-term time horizon.”
We consider the phrasing rather interesting. Note that Zuckerberg didn’t say “… we are not going to do it on any kind of short-term horizon,” which, in our opinion, makes it extremely plausible that they are indeed going to do it in the near future.
The speculation in the market is in consonance with that inference.
Tags: facebook
