Zuckerberg will ring NASDAQ bell from Menlo Park

Krystal Peak · May 14, 2012 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/26b1

Facebook follows the growing trend of staying on the West Coast, even when opening on Wall Street

Why fly all the way to New York to go public on Wall Street when you can do it from the comfort of your own office? That seems to be the trend Silicon Valley CEOs are setting now that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckeberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg will ring in the Nasdaq's day of trading from the company headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif on Friday.

Just a few months ago, Zynga's CEO Mark Pincus rang his own bell for employees at the company’s headquarters in San Francisco when the company went public. Who knows, maybe the Nasdaq will just keep a bell over in the Bay Area so we don't have to expel all that extra carbon.

The current target price range for Facebook is still estimated between $28 to $35 a share for a valuation of $77 billion to $96 billion. This will make it the largest-ever valuation at the time of IPO for an American company -- Yowzers.

This latest update, filed last week, got would-be investors questioning how strong the company's mobile developement was. Facebook admitted that its mobile work had drastically slowed the pace that the company adds new users and could end up hurting the company revenue in the long run.

Since the original Facebook IPO filing, it has been understood that the company has still been grappling with how to truly monetize its mobile ecosphere since the platform doesn't incorporate Sponsored ads at the same rate as the browser-based platform. 

Facebook has looked at the news feed to inject its paid advertisements rather than banner or side-bar ads but finding the right combination and testing it has not been as quick of a process as some may wish.

In the latest S-1 filing, the company state that it does "not currently directly generate any meaningful revenue from the use of Facebook mobile products, and our ability to do so successfully is unproven."

The filing goes on to point out that "the recent trend of our daily active users (DAUs) increasing more rapidly than the increase in the number of ads delivered. If users increasingly access Facebook mobile products as a substitute for access through personal computers, and if we are unable to successfully implement monetization strategies for our mobile users . . .”

So while Facebook is willing to admit the faults it has in its mobile advertisements, the company also is posting its expectations that once it finds the right combination, it will again take off like a rocket.

Facebook is more than halfway into its national roadshow for an expected May 18 debut on NASDAQ and is crossing all of its t's and dotting all of its i's in these last few days, as investors pick away at S-1 filings for more details that it wants. One of these areas has clearly been in the mobile realm where everyone has been looing to find new revenue and growth, both of which Facebook has fallen short of and needs to provide better explainations about in order to get all of the money-men on board.

As the clock ticks down to the most highly anticipated tech IPO (NASDAQ:FB) since Google, the 3,000 Facebook employees and the world are waiting to see just what kind of spectacle the event will be.

And others are just interested to see whether Zuckerberg will change out of his PJs for the 6am bell.

 

Image Source: Mashable via Flickr images.)

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