Facebook's IPO one of world's largest
By BARBARA ORTUTAYAP Technology Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - Facebook's initial public offering of stock is one of the largest ever. The world's definitive online social network is raising at least $16 billion for the company and its early investors in a transaction that values Facebook at $104 billion.
It's a big windfall for a company that began eight years ago with no way to make money.
Facebook priced its IPO at $38 per share on Thursday, at the top of expectations. The company is selling just a portion of its shares as part of the offering. The $38 price means all of its shares will be worth about $104 billion, giving the company a market value higher than Amazon.com and other well-known companies such as Kraft, Disney and McDonald's.
Facebook's stock is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market sometime Friday morning under the ticker symbol "FB." That's when so-called retail investors can try to buy the stock.
Facebook's offering is the culmination of a year's worth of Internet IPOs that began last May with LinkedIn Corp. Since then, a steady stream of startups focused on the social side of the Web has gone public, with varying degrees of success. It all led up to Facebook, the company that's come to define social networking by getting 900 million people around the world to share everything from photos of their pets to their deepest thoughts.