Facebook filed for a much-anticipated stock offering Wednesday that put a dollar figure on the world's addiction to sharing, commenting and evaluating life with their online friends and family.
The company said it plans to raise $5 billion in its stock sale, making it the largest initial public offering of a Web firm in history.
Based on that figure, analysts say Facebook's value could reach between $75 billion and $100 billion.
The shares are expected to begin trading in the spring under the ticker "FB."
Final pricing will not be set for months, and the size of the stock offering probably will increase with investor demand. The filing sets the stage for the offering in May.
The government-required filing revealed details about the company that were previously unknown because the firm was private.
The paperwork portrays a company that makes the vast majority of its money from selling display ads targeted to its users who have revealed to Facebook much about their lives.
Those connections and activities among its 845 million members are an advertiser's dream, experts say.
The filing stated that Facebook users upload 250 million photos a day, signal that they "like" items posted by friends about 2.7 billion times a day, and have created a web of 100 billion friends and connections.
Last year, the company saw $3.7 billion in revenue and $1 billion in profit, astounding figures for an 8-year-old enterprise, although slightly less than what some analysts had expected. Google, perhaps Facebook's primary rival, brought in just shy of $38 billion in revenue last year. It launched its own a social network, Google+, in June.
The offering will catapult Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg, who co-founded the online phenomenon in his Harvard University dorm room, into the ranks of the richest Americans.
It will also create enormous wealth in Silicon Valley and more than 1,000 new millionaires among the company's 3,200 employees.
The filing reveals Zuckerberg will hold about a third of the company's shares but nearly 57 percent of the voting power.
His role is so central that the documents listed his death as a risk factor for the entire company.
"In the event that Mr. Zuckerberg controls our company at the time of his death, control may be transferred to a person or entity that he designates as his successor," the filing states.
The offering prospectus laid out the 2011 compensation for its top executives, which amounted to $1.5 million for Zuckerberg, and $30.9 million for its high-profile chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg.
The offering is being run jointly by the nation's largest investment banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., with Morgan Stanley taking the coveted lead position.
In a letter from Zuckerberg in the prospectus, he explains Facebook's philosophy, which he calls the "Hacker Way."
"Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people," the letter says.
He argues that Facebook should be viewed differently by investors than other public companies because it was not founded with the intention of making money.
"Simply put: We don't build services to make money; we make money to build better services," the letter says. "These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits."
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement