Mark Zuckerberg Rings NASDAQ Bell; Facebook Third Largest IPO Opening in History

dgstorm · May 18, 2012

The big news of the day is now officially out. Facebook's IPO was launched and priced out at $38, with a valuation set at $104 billion. Mark Zuckerberg himself rang the NASDAQ bell to start the trading day off with the big announcement. But, of course, he and the rest of his team at Facebook couldn't just do it the old fashioned way. They are code-junkies and hackers, after-all. So, they did things a little differently. One was pretty simple. Without a word, he rang the bell remotely from his company's headquarters (normally new IPO's will go to New York to ring it in person, although not always, so he was not the first to do this). Second, and this it where things get more interesting... beforehand, his team of engineers at the HQ found a way to hack the remote NASDAQ button, so that at the exact moment he hit the button to ring the bell, it would post the story to his Facebook timeline to let his friends and subscribers know. Here's a quote from the TechCrunch article with a few details,

During lunch, some us started talking about how cool it would be if the second Mark rang the bell, a story would post to his timeline to let his friends and subscribers know.

I was so excited about this idea that when I got back to my desk, I posted on Facebook: “We should totally hack the button so it pushes an open graph action, “Mark Rang the NASDAQ bell”.

The first person to comment? Zuck: “It would be epic if you pulled that off.”

I got to work that night.

The hack was successful. The IPO went off without a hitch, breaking several records. And the rest, as they say, is history...

Here's the full official press release for the IPO:

Facebook Announces Pricing of Initial Public Offering

MENLO PARK, Calif., May 17, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Facebook (NASDAQ: FB) today announced the pricing of its initial public offering of 421,233,615 shares of its common stock at a price to the public of $38 per share. The shares are expected to begin trading on the NASDAQ Global Select Market on May 18, 2012, under the symbol “FB.” Facebook is offering 180,000,000 shares of Class A common stock and selling stockholders are offering 241,233,615 shares of Class A common stock. Closing of the offering is expected to occur on May 22, 2012, subject to customary closing conditions.

In addition, Facebook and the selling stockholders have granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 63,185,042 additional shares of Class A common stock to cover over-allotments, if any.

Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan, Goldman, Sachs & Co., BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Allen & Company LLC, Citigroup, Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank Securities are serving as book runners for the offering. RBC Capital Markets and Wells Fargo Securities are serving as active co-managers.

The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. Copies of the prospectus related to the offering may be obtained from: Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, New York 10014, Attention: Prospectus Department (Tel: +1 866 718 1649; e-mail: prospectus(at)morganstanley.com); J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, (Tel: +1 866 803 9204); or Goldman, Sachs & Co., 200 West Street, New York, NY 10282, Attention: Prospectus Department (Tel: +1 866 471 2526, e-mail: prospectus-ny(at)ny.email.gs.com).

A registration statement related to these securities has been filed with, and declared effective by, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction.

Skull One · May 18, 2012

I can't wait to see how many people lose serious money on this stock. The IPO is going off at 100 times its earning. I expect to see a quick bubble that will pop. Could see their stock below IPO price in less than 3 months.

If you want a really good example of this, check out ZNGA (Zynga Inc). They actually MAKE money. Their stock is currently at $8.27 and their IPO was just a mere $10.

Skull One · May 18, 2012

LOL. This stock didn't go off like a rocket at ALL. In fact it already fell to $38 once today. That is more like a lead ballon take off. It might actually take less than a month for it to fall below $38 a now.

Well at least Zuckerberg made his money. Hopefully the initial investors made their money back in the first 30 minutes of trading.