Facebook debut as a public company fails to pop as stock closes nearly flat

(Nasdaq via Facebook, Zef Nikolla/ Associated Press ) - In this image provided by Facebook, Facebook founder, Chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, center, applauds at the opening bell of the Nasdaq stock market, Friday, May 18, 2012, from Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. The social media company priced its IPO on Thursday at $38 per share, and beginning Friday regular investors will have a chance to buy shares.

NEW YORK — In the hours before Facebook’s stock began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market for the first time, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reminded the company’s 3,500 employees not to get caught up in the hoopla surrounding its long-awaited initial public offering.

“Right now this all seems like a big deal,” Zuckerberg said before he pushed a button that rang Nasdaq’s opening bell from company headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park, Calif. “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.”

Facebook’s IPO, it turns out, wasn’t as big a deal as expected.
One of the most anticipated IPOs in Wall Street history ended on a flat note Friday, with Facebook’s stock closing at $38.23, up 23 cents from Thursday night’s pricing.
That means the company founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room has a market value of about $105 billion, more than Amazon.com, McDonald’s and Silicon Valley icons Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.
It also gave 28-year-old Zuckerberg a stake worth $19,252,698,725.50.
But for many seeking a big first-day pop in Facebook’s share price, the increase of six-tenths of one percent was a letdown.
“This is like kissing your sister,” said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPO Scoop, a research firm. “With all the drumbeats and hype, I don’t think there’ll be barroom bragging tonight.”
Added Nick Einhorn, an analyst with IPO advisory firm Renaissance Capital: “It wasn’t quite as exciting as it could have been. But I don’t think we should view it as a failure.”
Indeed, the small jump in price could be seen as an indication that Facebook and the investment banks that arranged the IPO priced the stock in an appropriate range.
It was also good for ordinary investors, who are mostly shut out from the IPO price and have to buy the stock in the open market on day one. They got a chance to buy all day at a price not much above $38.
And it was good for early investors in the company, who owned more than half the 421 million shares made available in the IPO. Had the stock shot to $60 Friday morning, those early investors would have felt they hadn’t gotten enough money for their stakes.
The 421 million shares that were sold fetched $16 billion and represented 15 percent of the company’s stock. Facebook got $7 billion, and the early investors $9 billion. The other 85 percent of Facebook’s stock is owned by Zuckerberg and other Facebook executives, employees and early investors. In comparison, Google offered just 7.2 percent of its stock when it went public in 2004. Its stock rose 18 percent on day one.
Here was Facebook’s “timeline” Friday, trading under the symbol “FB” on the Nasdaq Stock Market:
The stock opened at 11:30 a.m. at $42.05, but soon dipped to $38.01. It briefly traded as high as $45 and by noon was at $40.40. It fluttered throughout the afternoon and hugged the $38 mark for much of the final hour, before closing at $38.23.
By the end of the day, about 570 million shares had changed hands, a huge trading volume for any company.