The
Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook is moving closer to an
initial public stock offering that could value the company at more than
$100 billion.
The newspaper said “people familiar with the matter” told a reporter
late Monday that the company could go public in the second quarter of
2012. The sources said Facebook is looking into raising $10 billion in
its IPO, dwarfing other technology companies initial offerings.
The company has been vague in the past about the timing of its inital
public offering. A Facebook spokesman refused comment on the latest
report.
The
Wall Street Journal says Facebook is in talks with the U.S. Securities
and Exchange Commission about filing for the IPO as early as this year.
Facebook has said it will exceed 500 private shareholders in 2011,
forcing the company under U.S. law to file a public financial report by
the end of April 2012.
The world's largest social media network has more than 800 million
users. The company's 27-year-old CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, founded the
company in his Harvard dorm room in 2004, before dropping out of the
prestigious American university.
