The stock was up 8 percent in early afternoon trading.
A man stops to photograph Nasdaq in Times Square today as Facebook has its IPO. The social media company priced its IPO on Thursday at $38 per share. That means Facebook is worth about $112 billion, more than Amazon.com and McDonald's. But as many people looked for a big first-day pop in Facebook’s share price, the single-digit increase was somewhat of a letdown.
“It wasn’t quite as exciting as it could have been,” said Nick Einhorn, an analyst with IPO advisory firm Renaissance Capital. “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.
Earlier Friday the company’s 28-year-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, smiled as he rang the opening bell from Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Surrounded by cheering Facebook employees and wearing his signature hoodie, he pushed the button that signals the opening of the stock market in New York.
The morning’s events followed an all-night “hackathon” at the company, where engineers stayed up coding software and conjuring up new ideas for Facebook and its 900 million users.
“Right now this all seems like a big deal. 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,” Zuckerberg said. “In the past eight years, all of you out there have built the largest community in the history of the world. You done amazing things that we never would have dreamed of and I can’t wait to see what you guys all do going forward.”On Thursday, Facebook and the investment bankers settled on a price of $38 per share. The company and its early investors raised $16 billion in the offering, which valued Facebook at $104 billion. That makes Facebook the most valuable U.S. company to ever go public.