As I reported last week, the Facebook IPO may be delayed a little from its original third week in May projected launch time. Some experts in the industry believe that CEO Mark Zuckerberg may be just too busy with acquisitions and other Facebook housekeeping issues to get the IPO ready on time.
Today however, All Things D is reporting that the SEC paperwork and S-1 prospectus are ready for approval and waiting on the green light. So we can expect action soon, but given the number of delays we’ve seen already, I won’t jump to any conclusion. The next step is to distribute the paperwork to investors and roll-out the IPO roadshow.
The IPO is shooting to raise $5 billion for future investments at company, but there has been some debate about the estimated value of the social networking giant. Many savvy business people seemed to agree that Facebook was worth about $100 to $104 billion, but more recently, other professionals have argued that the estimate is a little high and offer a better estimate of $90 billion.
Of course another issue could cause investors to shy away from Facebook at this moment. Yahoo! recently filed a lawsuit against them involving technology patents. They are claiming Facebook only bought some patents to protect against lawsuits from ones they have already infringed upon in the past. Who knows how ugly this could get. Patent lawsuits seem pretty unpredictable.
In any event, it looks like the Facebook IPO will roll-out sometime in the very near future. As to the true value of Facebook, we’ll let the investors decide. What will happen with the Yahoo! lawsuit is anybody’s guess. Check back here for more news on the Facebook IPO is it becomes available.