There was tremendous hype about the IPO of Facebook. But when one goes about the web looking at what people are saying, the vast majority of online comments are totally negative about Zuckerman, Facebook and the future exploitation of customers of that corporation due to it spying on its users and abusing them in various ingenious ways. The naysayers are correct about this IPO being a dud.
This is one comment from this story: FACEBOOK FLOP? Underwriters Forced To Prop Up Stock
By all reasonable measures, the IPO failed. The underwriters had to intervene twice to protect the $38 price. The last intervention at the close was two tranches, of 10,000,000 shares each, at the $38 price. Otherwise the close would have been under $38.
The opening price was $42.50 as marketed by the Big Derivative Beast owners such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs. They hoped the hyper hype would hop into the markets and lure many deluded buyers into a rush sale. But immediately, the stock floundered badly. In the end, the sellers working for Zuckerman had to prop up the sales themselves. They are now licking their wounds wondering what collapse is in store after Monday when sellers mob the board and buyers are scarce.
Most analysts are giving Zuckerberg and the big trading houses the middle finger: Facebook Stalls in Public Debut After Record $16B in IPO – Bloomberg
The shares rose 23 cents above the IPO price of $38 as of 4 p.m. in New York. Facebook sold 421.2 million shares to raise $16 billion yesterday, giving the company a $104.2 billion market value.
Underwriters bought Facebook’s stock to keep it from falling below the IPO price, people with knowledge of the matter said today. The offering valued the company at 107 times trailing 12-month earnings, more than every S&P 500 member except Amazon.com Inc. and Equity Residential…revenue growth is poised to slow for a third straight year and advertising sales haven’t kept pace with user additions.
About $1 trillion had been erased from American equity values this month after speculation Greece will leave the euro region reversed the biggest first-quarter rally since 1998, according to data compiled by Bloomberg…Facebook executives and directors planned to sell 189.4 million shares.
The bad news that GM was discontinuing its ad buys hammered this IPO pretty hard but right in the middle of the morning came this dark news: Facebook users file class action lawsuit over online tracking | The Raw Story
Users of the service have filed an “amended consolidated class action complaint” in federal court in San Jose, California, relating to allegations that Facebook has been “improperly tracking the internet use of its members even after they logged out of their accounts”.
The class action is being brought by law firms Stewarts Law US and Bartimus, Frickleton, Robertson & Gorny…The plaintiffs are citing the federal Wiretap Act, which provides statutory damages of up to $10,000 per user and they say potentially implies damages of more than $15bn if compensation is rolled out across Facebook’s user base.
Hey, I will join this lawsuit! I could use $10,000! I once did that with a general suit against a major corporation and got well over $100 so this would be ten times ten better. I am all for it. The key point is, Facebook’s fascists are tracking people ALL THE TIME all over the web! This is a huge no-no. Doing it without telling anyone. This, on top of selling personal data to spam artists is going to be the death-knell for FB.
Thilo Weichert, the data protection commissioner for the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, was quoted in the German daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warning shareholders to be aware that if European privacy authorities have their way, “Facebook’s business model will implode.”
So, the Germans are now after Facebook? HAHAHA. This means German investors will avoid this IPO, too. All the news for Facebook is negative. The 100X stock valuation versus earnings is a real killer. That is so far off the mark, only two other organizations, both heading to the rocks and failure, have similar values. This information is filtering into the news, too.
I expect Facebook to be another AOL/Enron failure.
Email:
emeinel@fairpoint.net
MAILING ADDRESS:
EMS NEWS
P.O. BOX 483
BERLIN, NY 12022
Make checks out to ‘Elaine Supkis’
Click on the Pegasus icon on the right sidebar to donate via Paypal.
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
Culture of Life News 
This was a case of the elites thinking that the peasants would once again gamble on wall street for their pump & dump scheme.
Unfortunately for them the peasants no longer have money due to FREE trade. So they didn’t show up to buy the latest phantom stock.
I never had an account on Facebook. It struck me as a scam from the very first moment I heard about it. That Zuckerberg made his millions counting on the fact that peddling the real information of young female co-eds on FB would attract the money of perverts really angered me.
Are they ripping dollars in half and selling each piece for a buck again?
This is just a repeat of DotCom. But now it’s Web 2.0, fizzling into the same harsh reality: how to pull reliable revenue from web applications. If comparisons are to be made choose AOL or Yahoo. Enron was more like the banking collapse, where fancy financial footwork was hidden from view. With Facebook, anyone could see the folly for themselves.
Really the only revenue from things like this is advertising and then Facebook is just another portal vying for ad revenue in a jungle where Google is already King Kong and the ground is littered with bones.
heh…
P/E ratio 100.
(apple 13, google 20)
That stock will be worth 8 dollars before next christmas.
So the sweet Sugarman is rewarded with billions of $$ that he perfected a new spying device. And the sweetest victory of all would be that the idiots invite, voluntarily, the Small Brother in their most private life.
This stock is a huge casino bet, however, for those looking for a low price to get into something with potential—-well we shall see.
It is funny though that the stock had to be propped up on the day it opened.
Hello, Elaine,
Borowitz had a great entry this week about the Greeks floating an IPO named FetaBook …
Fischer-Dieskau has died. Did you ever see him perform? I did – so happy to have been touched this great artist.
Hope all is well on your mountain
ΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩΩ
ELAINE: yes, I saw the news. I saw him in a number of operas and concerts both in Europe and NYC. He had the most marvelous, liquid voice with great emotion.
Morgan Stanley spent at least 2Billion in the last hour keeping the price above $38.00….should be quite a show Monday morning!
“Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World”
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Treasure-Islands-Havens-Stole-World/dp/1847921108/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1294155747&sr=1-1
I would recommend that book.
I am not surprised that the stock had to be propped up, but who the hell bought all the rest of it?
I can only think of two groups: libertarians (hoping always to join the 1%) or hedge/mutual funds (using the savings of millions of people who were forced to contribute to 401k plans). Who else could be so stupid at this point in the game?
I wonder if ALL the stock was bought by the sellers?
As for that idiot Zuckerberg, people like him are just downright evil and should be executed. To set up an internet program for the sole purpose of collecting private info and then selling it for billions is just disgustingly evil.
I hope he pees on someone’s cornflakes. I really do.
Might send a message to younger people to live an honest life.
“Eduardo Saverin renounces citizenship in order to avoid paying huge US tax bills”
http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-co-founder-severin-could-save-67-million-2012-05
There is always icing on every turdcake.
I have to use Google. I find it superior in every way to competitors.
Never had any need to use Facebook.
Morgan Stanley may announce another huge loss in the billions soon!
They have too! We KNOW the first statement was a lie. When have they EVER told the truth the first time around? Did the Fed tell us they loaned 16 trillion overnight to every bank in Europe?
Like I said before, it is 50 billion plus. A 2 billion loss is pocket change to these clowns. Remember: they needed a 700 billion bailout pronto or else just 4 years ago. That’s only 1/20th of what they really needed. Always apply the “20X Rule” to whatever they say.
An oil rig exploded and some oil is leaking? Times it by 20.
A reactor melted down and released radiation? Times it by 20.
A investment fund failed? Times it by 20.
AIG fails and cannot pay to insure planet earth? Cash your chips and leave the casino.
They’re pretending that they don’t need a bailout, but because of FDIC, they may need it yet—anyway they won’t tell you in any case because everything is done in the black box of secret. In the meantime, kudos to Pat Buchanan, he’s the only one to say reinstate Glass Steagall!
“Shtadt da bubble macheen ” ! Snell , you shtinkas ! Ve must have more
bubbles !
Lawrence Whelk
43 Anheuser-Busch Inbev Sa $115,413 BELGIUM
44 Rio Tinto Limited $115,148 AUSTRALIA
45 GlaxoSmithKline plc $113,823 UNITED KINGDOM
46 Bank of China Limited $107,849 CHINA
47 Qualcomm Incorporated $106,045 UNITED STATES
48 Pepsico Inc. $104,473 UNITED STATES
49 Amazon.com, Inc. $102,576 UNITED STATES
50 Total SA $100,800 FRANCE
51 British American Tobacco p.l.c. $99,401 UNITED KINGDOM
52 Abbott Laboratories $97,613 UNITED STATES
53 Vale S.A $97,091 BRAZIL
54 Ojsc Polyus Gold $97,060 RUSSIAN FEDERATION
55 America Movil S.A.B. de C.V. $97,058 MEXICO
If I had 104 billion dollars I would buy Pepsico not Facebook.
Rio Tinto seems quite tangible too.