Why the SEC quiet period needs to change
Despite the public perception, the SEC quiet period isn’t a great boon for reporters and analysts.
I hate that some companies use the vague quiet period rules to duck important questions about their business.
But more importantly, I hate the feeling of unfairness. My goal isn’t to beat up on companies when I know they can’t fight back. My goal is to present the most complete picture to potential investors.
What the public knows about … Continue Reading
Startup helps employees decide when to sell their stock
Facebook employees and others who are contemplating when to sell their stock can get some help from a new startup called Wealthfront.
The company has created a financial planning tool that lets anyone who works in a tech company test their options for selling stock after an initial public offering.
Andy Rachleff, chief executive of Wealthfront and co-founder of Benchmark Capital, said in an interview that the company is targeting tech professionals in their 20s … Continue Reading
Facebook worth $94B, private market says
Now that Facebook is fast on its way to becoming a public company, and its financials have been laid bare, there’s just one question that remains unanswered: What is Facebook actually worth?
A private market transaction completed Thursday may provide us with best the answer yet.
One hundred thousand Class B common stock shares were sold for $40 a pop on SharesPost, according to information obtained by Bloomberg News and confirmed by the private capital … Continue Reading
Why I’m so bullish on Facebook
Facebook faces some real challenges when it comes to keeping up its growth pace, as I covered yesterday. But I’m still bullish on the company, and here’s why.
Massive audience and social graph
Facebook has a connected audience like no other. Its social graph connects 845 million people around the world through 100 billion connections, according to its S-1.
That’s not an easy thing to replicate, as Google is finding out as it struggles to … Continue Reading
Forget $100B! Facebook could soon be worth $200B
This is a revised version of a story that appeared on CNET earlier today; it is republished with permission.
For all the naysaying about Facebook, that it’s a flash in the pan and such, there are very few that say that “social” is going away.
Facebook has defined the social era of computing — and the companies that defined the previous eras of computing each command market values of $200 billion or more.
Facebook should … Continue Reading
Facebook’s next big move: a paywall?
Facebook’s IPO filing yesterday comes after a highly successful 2011 — $3.7 billion in revenue, $1 billion in profit according to recent reports. Yet, as the world eagerly awaits the opportunity to invest in the social networking giant, it’s worth asking, where does Facebook go after the FB ticker starts trading?
After all, Mark Zuckerberg has put off going public as long as possible because of the demands it puts on companies. Wall Street and … Continue Reading
Rocky Likes Facebook … but sees some challenges
Facebook is a fantastic company that will be sold at a fantastic premium. That’s my key takeaway from the company’s filing of its S-1. The document, the first major public step in the process to an IPO, gives us a real look at the company’s numbers and insight into the minds of its management.
I love what I see. As terrible an offering as I thought Groupon was, Facebook is the polar opposite. There are … Continue Reading
Dylan’s Desk: 6 things you should know about the Facebook IPO
If Facebook files its paperwork for an initial public offering this week, as many expect it to do, we’ll be on the road to one of the biggest tech IPOs in recent history.
The offering will probably raise $10 billion in cash for the company and will value Facebook at somewhere between $75 and $100 billion, making founder Mark Zuckerberg, who holds an estimated 24 percent of the company, a billionaire many times over. That … Continue Reading
The 3 Facebook IPO risk factors that matter
When Facebook’s S-1 filing comes out (which could be as soon as tomorrow, if you believe the Wall Street Journal), we’ll see a lot of risks in it.
The S-1 is the first and most significant document that a company fills out, and the Securities and Exchange Commission publishes, prior to an initial public offering. If it’s typical, we’ll see many boilerplate risks, such as an earthquake wiping out Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, … Continue Reading
Last year’s deals: 2011 saw fewer exits, younger companies & more money
Mergers, acquisitions and IPOs for venture-backed startups were down in 2011 by some metrics and up by others.
Overall, the year saw a 14 percent drop in deal activity between 2010 and 2011. Dow Jones VentureSource‘s data shows 522 total exits for the year — that’s 69 deals fewer than in 2010.
However, companies in 2011 were exiting earlier than yesteryear’s counterparts. They took less capital along the way, and they also generated more money … Continue Reading
Five tech industry predictions for 2012
The past year in technology was pretty wild.
The really big Internet IPO returned and the massive venture capital funding bubble inflated, which seems difficult considering that the venture capital industry is far smaller than it was three years ago. But look at some of the crazy valuations on revenue-less photo-sharing startups like Color and Path. And there is clearly another bubble inflating in the cloud computing sector, with every company that uses a distributed … Continue Reading
Cool private companies: 3 software firms making a splash (and cash)
As a software securities analyst, Richard Davis spends 200 days a year on the road visiting software companies. He goes to public companies such as Oracle and Salesforce.com, but he also visits up-and-coming software companies he thinks will go public in the near future. In his new column, Davis is going to talk about some candidates he thinks may be ripe for the IPO class of 2012 or 2013.
ServiceNow: IT management platform
The San … Continue Reading
Zynga: Beyond the IPO
Three years ago, Mark Pincus told me that he was going to make Zynga more valuable than EA within five years. It took him only two.
Zynga is a remarkable venture story, and the company’s impending IPO is a huge moment for the games industry — it marks the coming of age of the West’s leading proponent of casual, free-to-play gaming.
With the timing for the company’s roadshow now seemingly confirmed, what should we expect … Continue Reading
Investors should be even more worried about Groupon, as its share price falls
Groupon’s stock has fallen precipitously during the last three days. Today, it broke below the Chicago-based couponers IPO price of $20.00 for the first time. At a recent price of $17.41, any IPO investors who were still holding on to the stock would be down nearly 13%.
Someone who bought at retail at Groupon’s 52-week high of $31.14 (shortly after the stock debuted) would be down 45%.
As with many stock movements, it’s impossible to … Continue Reading
Yelp’s IPO filing: no tricks, but big questions linger
Yelp’s S-1 for its upcoming IPO is a breath of fresh air. After five months of studying the S-1 of daily deals site Groupon, I’m glad to see local-business-reviews site Yelp come out with a reasonably clean document.Groupon tortured many accounting rules and made up some of its own (forcing it to amend its S-1 repeatedly and delaying its IPO), but Yelp seems to be playing by the books.
Groupon’s S-1 had me writing “bullshit” … Continue Reading
First Groupon, now Yelp: Is the tech IPO window open again?
Groupon went public earlier this month. Angie’s List went public Wednesday and saw its shares surge 25 percent the following day. And on Thursday, Yelp filed for a $100 million IPO. Has the tech IPO window has opened again, and if so, how long it will stay open?
One company that could benefit from the window opening is Zynga, which is expected to go public after Thanksgiving after having waiting for its chance since June. … Continue Reading
Zynga has acquired 15 companies so far this year
Zynga has acquired 15 companies so far this year, including a few it hasn’t announced.
The information is included in an amendment to an S1 filing that the company filed today. The S1 is Zynga’s document for going public. The date for the IPO hasn’t been announced, but it is rumored to be expected after Thanksgiving.
For the nine months ended Sept. 30, Zynga acquired 13 game companies in the social and mobile game realms … Continue Reading
Online game firm Nexon could raise $1.3B in IPO
South Korean online game publisher Nexon could raise nearly $1.3 billion in an initial public offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, according to Reuters and the Nikkei business daily.
Nexon, which was started in South Korea and moved its official headquarters to Japan, is one of Asia’s mighty online game publishers, with games including MapleStory, Mabinogi, Vindictus, Combat Arms, Dragon Nest and Dungeon Fighter Online.
The company plans to raise more than 100 billion yen, … Continue Reading
Groupon’s tricky S-1 math
[Editor's note: This story is republished with permission by Rocky Agrawal. It originally ran yesterday on his blog, reDesign.]
Quick: How many people bought a Groupon in the third quarter?
The obvious, easy answer based on the latest S-1 is 29.5 million. That’s what Reuters wrote Wednesday. (They rounded up to 30 million.) But that number is wrong.
What Groupon reports in their S-1 (in their quarterly results) is how many people have ever bought … Continue Reading
Who gets hurt if Groupon collapses
Daily deals site Groupon is launching its IPO roadshow this week and is seeking a $10 billion valuation for the company, less than half of what was rumored when the company first filed to go public in June. That’s a big haircut.
With the recent turmoil in the markets, it’s a terrible time to bring a new offering to market. But Groupon may have no choice: based on the numbers we’ve seen from the company … Continue Reading
