Facebook stock up slightly in first day of trading
Posted May 18, 2012 4:30 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
NEW YORK – Regular investors can now to buy shares in Facebook for the first time, as the stock has begun trading on the Nasdaq in New York, Friday.
Facebook stock went on sale at 11:30 a.m. ET under the ticker symbol “FB.”
Facebook has priced its initial public offering of stock at $38 (U.S.) per share, raising around $16-billion in capital.
At that price, the IPO values the world’s biggest online social network at around $104 billion, slightly more than Amazon.com, and well above well-known corporations such as Disney and Kraft.
It was expected that the stock would skyrocket at the open and at least double by the end but that did not happen.
The stock opened at $42.05 but within the first half hour fell back down to the $38 mark. By the closing bell the stock was only up $0.23 cents at $38.23.
Despite the muted market reaction, Facebook still managed to set a new record for a stock debut with more than 460-million shares traded.
Facebook is the third-highest valued company to ever go public, according to data from Dealogic, a financial data provider. Only the two Chinese banks have been worth more.
At $16 billion, the size of the IPO is the third-largest for a U.S. company, squeezed between No. 2 power company Enel and No. 4 General Motors, according to Renaissance Capital. The largest U.S. IPO was Visa, which raised $17.86 in 2008.
