Facebook shows lots of cash and revenue, high valuation

In Facebook's S-1 registration statement, the most recent rounds of funding over the last year or so were sold at a price of $20.85 per share of Series A common stock. This places the valuation used for those raises somewhere in the neighborhood of making Facebook worth $86 billion, without taking into account any convertible preferred shares or option exercises. Some other items of interest are the consolidated financials. Facebook shows that as of 12/31/2011, it has close to $1.5 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. In addition, it also lists net income of $1 billion for 2011. Clearly companies have learned since the dot-com era on how to have real revenue recognition from an online company. We will have to see where the investment community puts for the initial share price, but I have heard rumors of somewhere in the $30 range putting the market cap well over $100 billion. To put that into perspective, that could approach or go beyond the valuations of Google and General Electric. It is funny to see reports on the news about all the "instant millionaires" or billionaires after the IPO. Anyone familiar with securities knows that it is not that easy. There are SEC rules, federal and state laws, as well as contractual restrictions on the ability to sell any stock that someone at Facebook may own. It appears the terms of any lock up and market standoff agreements exempt Mark Zuckerberg, but most executives, officers, directors, and employees will be restricted in when, how, and how much stock can be sold off. In addition, Mr. Zuckerberg still has to comply with securities laws when selling any stock. So, yes, there will be instant millionaires on paper, but someone has to own a large number of shares and be able to sell them to realize the status of a millionaire. That being said, more than likely, some founders, venture capitalists, early investors, and early key employees will do very well off their early involvement in the company.