Facebook and its stock offering

2012-02-03 11:25

分享到

 

Get Flash Player

download

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.

Investors soon will be able to own shares of Facebook stock. The world's biggest social media network presented documents to the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday. The documents are required before the company can make its initial public offering, or IPO. A date for the stock sale has yet to be announced.

Experts say Facebook could raise about five billion dollars. That would be one of the biggest IPO sales ever. And it would be much bigger than Google's first public stock sale in 2004. At that time, the Internet search company raised almost two billion dollars.

Facebook has 800 million users around the world. It is the second most visited website after Google. Now, experts say the social media network is in a position to become one of the most valuable Internet companies.

Stock expert Anupam Palit at Greencrest Capital says that among social media sites, Facebook is in a class by itself.

ANUPAM PALIT: "It is the biggest company in this space and we believe what makes it very unique from every other company that went public last year in this space is that it is very, very profitable."

Early estimates place the total value of the social network between 75 and 100 billion dollars. That includes earlier investments by other companies. David Kirkpatrick wrote the book "The Facebook Effect." He says Facebook's IPO will be historic.

DAVID KIRKPATRICK: "Will Facebook's IPO be the biggest IPO in American history, probably not, but it will certainly be by far the biggest Internet or technology IPO we've ever seen."

The stock sale is also could make Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg one of the world's youngest billionaires. He is only 27.

Investment companies are likely to buy Facebook stock first. But investment manager Jim O'Shaugnessy says that is not so bad. He says the price of some IPO stocks are too high and fall not long after they first go on sale.

JIM O'SHAUGHNESSY: "Many IPO's come out being very, very overvalued because they get so hyped up and investors are so taken in by the story that they're willing to pay any amount just to be able to get into the stock. That generally translates to being very overvalued. So we generally tell investors that they should wait, probably a good full year before they look at buying stock that was recently IPO'd."

Recently, share prices of some Internet businesses have fallen after their stock was first offered. For example, stock of LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga, dropped in price by as much as 25 percent after going public.

There were similar questions eight years ago when Google sold stock to the public. Today, Google is one of the world's most valuable technology companies.

And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report. Find teaching and learning activities in The Classroom at VOA Learning English. I'm Mario Ritter.

Related Stories:

Facebook's flotation fever

Facebook成婚姻“第三者”

Facebook退出网站仍记录用户隐私信息

牛津英语词典进入Facebook时代

(来源:VOA 编辑:Rosy)

 

分享到

中国日报网英语点津版权说明:凡注明来源为“中国日报网英语点津:XXX(署名)”的原创作品,除与中国日报网签署英语点津内容授权协议的网站外,其他任何网站或单位未经允许不得非法盗链、转载和使用,违者必究。如需使用,请与010-84883561联系;凡本网注明“来源:XXX(非英语点津)”的作品,均转载自其它媒体,目的在于传播更多信息,其他媒体如需转载,请与稿件来源方联系,如产生任何问题与本网无关;本网所发布的歌曲、电影片段,版权归原作者所有,仅供学习与研究,如果侵权,请提供版权证明,以便尽快删除。

中国日报网双语新闻

扫描左侧二维码

添加Chinadaily_Mobile
你想看的我们这儿都有!

中国日报双语手机报

点击左侧图标查看订阅方式

中国首份双语手机报
学英语看资讯一个都不能少!

关注和订阅

本文相关阅读
人气排行
搜热词
 
 
精华栏目
 

阅读

词汇

视听

翻译

口语

合作

 

关于我们 | 联系方式 | 招聘信息

Copyright by chinadaily.com.cn. All rights reserved. None of this material may be used for any commercial or public use. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. 版权声明:本网站所刊登的中国日报网英语点津内容,版权属中国日报网所有,未经协议授权,禁止下载使用。 欢迎愿意与本网站合作的单位或个人与我们联系。

电话:8610-84883645

传真:8610-84883500

Email: languagetips@chinadaily.com.cn