Friendster up for salester

Updated

Word is that Friendster is up for sale. Is this any surprise? This has been troubled for over a year. Although calculations below suggest a profit may be made on this deal, thanks to Friendster’s popularity in some Asian countries.

Troubled social networking site Friendster has hired Montgomery & Co., a boutique investment banking firm in Santa Monica, Calif., to find a buyer.

Earlier this year, Friendster was shopping for a buyer, and according to the story, it was looking for a sale price in the ballpark of $200 million. Now its price has been lowered to the range of $50 million to $100 million. If my calculations are correct, Friendster has about $11 million pumped into it and could be as high as $15 million.

(from Rafat)

UPDATE: Tom reminds us in comments below that Friendster rejected Google’s offer to buy it for $30M million back in Oct 2003 (we wrote about here). Friendster, by locking into low-priced pre-IPO Google stock, would now be worth about $150-$350M, based on 5-10x share price rise since then, which is ballpark estimate. And would be liquid, cold cash now too. Youch!