NASDAQ Marketsite in Times Square at 11:30am Friday morning as Facebook stock opens for its first trade. Photo Credit: PrivCo
May 18, 2012 11:35am EST – Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) (PrivCo Ticker: FACEP) stock began trading on the NASDAQ this morning shortly after 11:30am EST under the ticker “FB” after a dramatic 30-minute delay due to the volume of Facebook orders.
The $43 opening price already represents a 13.2% increase to the $38 IPO price, which investors scrambled get a piece of. The $5 price bump brings Facebook’s valuation even higher to $118 billion.
At the $38 IPO price, Facebook’s offering raised over $16 billion, and the very likely activation of Facebook’s over-allotment shares brings the total raised to $18.4 billion.
Investors will be keen to track how high Facebook’s stock will pop in its IPO day trades. Social media peer LinkedIn jumped 109% on its opening day.
PrivCo anticipates a sizeable pop for Facebook given its considerable retail investor demand and media hype. However, PrivCo re-affirms its long-term fair value calculation of $25/share for Facebook.
As typical for IPOs, the later debut allows traders and exchange operators to prepare for the opening and ensure smooth transactions.
While NASDAQ workers prepared for the debut in New York, Facebook’s newly rich staff (the average Facebook employee is now worth $2.9 million) celebrated the IPO in an all-night ‘Hackathon’ Thursday evening.
The Facebook ‘Hackathon’, a tradition of overnight idea generation and program engineering sessions, culminated in CEO Mark Zuckerberg ringing the NASDAQ opening bell at 9:30am EST remotely from Facebook's Menlo Park, California headquarters.
