One hundred billion dollars. That's the eye-popping amount at which Facebook's swoon-worthy 2012 IPO could value the social media giant, according to The Wall Street Journal. Here, a brief guide to the figures and the forecasts:
$24 billion
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$10 billion
Amount the company reportedly wants to raise in its IPO. That would be one of the largest public stock offerings ever, and the largest for any tech company.
13
Number of past IPOs valued at more than $10 billion. According to Dealogic, only three — Visa Inc. at $19.7 billion in 2008, General Motors at $18.1 billion in 2010, and AT&T Wireless at $10.6 billion in 2000 — have been U.S. companies.
$21.9 billion
Amount of stock Industrial & Commercial Bank of China sold when it went public in October 2006 in one of the largest IPOs ever. At the close of its first day of trading, the company's market value was $148 billion.
$1.6 billion
Revenue Facebook took in in the first half of 2011, according to Reuters. While that's double what the company raked in a year earlier, it's less than investors forecasted. "If Google or any other public company just announced such a revenue miss, its stock would be nosediving," says Sam Hamadeh, a longtime critic of Facebook.
$23 billion
Value of Google when it went public in 2004, after raising $1.9 billion
$193.11 billion
Google's current market cap
$12.7 billion
Value of Groupon when the daily deals site went public on November 4
$16.7 billion
Value of Groupon after its first day of trading
$9.7 billion
Groupon's current valuation
42
Percent Groupon's stock has plummeted in the last five days of trading alone
$2.8 billion
Pandora's value after its first day of trading on June 15
$1.7 billion
Pandora's value today
More than 800 million
Number of users Facebook has
$125
Approximate value of each user, given Facebook's possible $100 billion evaluation
500 million
Users who log into the site daily
Sources: Facebook, Google Finance, Reuters, Telegraph, Wall Street Journal (2)
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