NEW YORK – Facebook, which is gearing to launch its IPO later this month, said the offering will be priced between $28-35 a share.
In a regulatory filing, Facebook said it will sell 337.41 million shares and the initial public offering price will be between $28 and $35 per share. At this range, the company will be valued between $77-96 billion.
Taking into account the top range of the stock price, Facebook could raise about $11 billion through the IPO. The company is expected to go public on May 18 and the stock will be listed on Nasdaq under the symbol ‘FB’.
Depending on the final value, the IPO could be one of the largest of a US firm on Wall Street, behind the 2008 offering of Visa ($17.8 billion) and General Motors ($15.7 billion) in 2010 , according to Renaissance Capital.
At the midpoint it could be the same amount of the third largest, AT&T, which raised $10.6 billion in 2000.
Facebook’s 27-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg is planning to sell 30.2 million shares, worth $951 million. He plans to use the proceeds to cover taxes.
Other stockholders who would be offering shares include the social network’s early investors such as James Breyer of the venture capital firm Accel Partners, who’s offering 38.2 million shares. Goldman Sachs is unloading 20% of its stake, or 13.2 million shares.
According to the filing, Zuckerberg would retain voting control of 58.8% of the company after the IPO.
Ahead of its IPO, Facebook also launched a 30-minute video about its ‘IPO roadshow’ which features Zuckerberg talking about the company’s growth and future prospects.
“I grew up with the internet. When I was in middle school, I was using search engines like Google and Yahoo,” Zuckerberg says in his opening line in the video presentation.
