“The SEC filing behind Facebook’s long-expected IPO has seen company founder Mark Zuckerberg take an Apple cue in his pay,” Electronista reports.
“The CEO earlier this month requested that, as of the start of 2013, his base pay be cut from as much as $500,000 in 2011 to just $1, much like Apple co-creator Steve Jobs. Zuckerberg is known to have taken advice from Jobs and considered his success an aspirational goal,” Electronista reports. “Like Jobs, most of Zuckerberg’s value will come from his stake in the company. At 28.4 percent ownership, the executive is estimated to be worth about $25 billion.”
Electronista reports, “The site generated about 85 percent of its $3.7 billion in 2011 revenue through ads and another 12 percent just through Zynga games like FarmVille or Zynga Poker.”
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Jessica Guynn reports for The Los Angeles Times, “Facebook Inc. filed papers Wednesday with the goal of raising $5 billion in a public stock sale that could come in May. The offering would be the largest among Internet companies, eclipsing Google Inc. in 2004 and Netscape Communications in 1995. Depending on demand, the company could be valued between $75 billion and $100 billion.”
“The IPO could be a bonanza for Mark Zuckerberg, the 27-year-old founder, who owns 28.2% of the company and is its single largest shareholder. His stake could be worth as much as $28 billion, earning him the ninth spot on Forbes’ list of richest Americans and putting him in the same league as Microsoft Corp.’s Bill Gates and Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison,” Guynn reports. “Joe Magyer, advisor and senior analyst with the Motley Fool, estimates that investors would be buying Facebook for 25 times sales when they could buy Google at five times sales, equivalent to setting money on fire without striking a match. ‘Facebook is a tremendous business with a lot of growth ahead of it. But it’s going to have to do amazing things for a long time to justify the kind of price it is going public at,’ Magyer said. ‘It’s going to be very difficult for Facebook to live up to the hype.'”
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