Report: Facebook Close to Filing IPO Papers, Valuation Could Reach $100 Billion

Posted on January 27, 2012

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Facebook may file papers for an IPO as early as Wednesday of next week. The WSJ says the IPO could raise $10 billion for Facebook and give the company a massive $75 to $100 billion valuation. The New York Post says the NYSE and Nasdaq are battling for Facebook's listing.

Facebook does have impressive revenues. They reportedly made $3.8 billion in 2011. However, the costs to make that $3.8 billion is unknown. The company has over 3,000 employees according to its factsheet.

Facebook says it has about 800 million active users. Strong growth continues for the company, but it may start getting close to its maximum number of active users as it approaches the 1 billion user mark, especially with the relatively recent entrance of Google+. There are only so many people on Earth (about 7 billion) and only a certain percentage of them are going to use Facebook. Facebook should be able to make a lot of revenues with a massive user base of 1 billion people, but probably not enough to deserve a valuation of $100 billion.