Facebook now carries a value of $82.9 billion, based on the closing price of the company’s shares in the latest private market auction, which occurred on SharesPost, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek. The social network now has a greater valuation than Amazon, which is worth $75.2 billion, and ranks as the second largest capitalized web company after Google, which is worth $192.28 billion.
The news comes a day after SecondMarket reported an auction of Facebook shares resulted in an implied value of $65.5 billion for the social network. The company’s value has surged more than 40 percent since December based on trades of the private stock via two online marketplaces. The valuation has increased sevenfold since March of 2010, according to Bloomberg.
Apparently the SharesPost auctions don’t close at the highest prices offered for the shares, as Bloomberg notes that bidding on Facebook stock peaked at $60 a share during the past month; assuming that figure’s correct, it’s roughly twice the closing price.
The amount of price movement looks a lot more dramatic when compared to the numbmer of Facebook shares that are changing hands. By definition, the privately-held company’s stock has a great deal less liquidity than any publicly held company.
We don’t yet know the volume of Facebook shares that moved in the latest auction, but the prior one on SecondMarket involved 670,000 shares. On average day, 5.1 million shares of Amazon trade — today’s news motivated a spike in trading of this stock, with a volume of 19.8 million recorded. Google, by contrast, has about 2.5 million shares trade on an average day, and today volume rose to 4.2 million.
If these numbers make you feel dizzy, you’re not alone. We’ve sought confirmation from Facebook and SharesPost, and will update this post with whatever we hear back.
What do you think about the latest numbers, and what do you expect from the next round of bidding on Facebook shares?
Source: All Facebook
Friday, January 28, 2011