Facebook IPO on May 17?

For many months (if not years) now, talk has been circulating about the world's largest social network, Facebook, going public. But so far, almost nothing has happened. Indeed, since February, the process of IPOing Marc Zuckerberg's site has been underway. And it's the decision following these steps that Facebook seems to be waiting for. Although the SEC (Securities & Exchange Commission) could still postpone the date following the acquisition of Instagram, it seems that Facebook will go public on May 17th.

But why is this IPO causing so much talk?

The reason is quite simple. In fact, Facebook's IPO is simply the biggest IPO of a technology company of all time. But these are only estimates, since when a company is not yet listed on the stock market, there is almost no information that allows us to get an idea of its value. Here, thanks in part to the purchase of Instagram, we know that Facebook's valuation is roughly between $75 and $104 billion. The problem is that this valuation is quite enormous compared to the social network's turnover ($3.7 billion) and its profits ($1 billion in 2011), which could create certain problems for investors.

But that's not all, as a recent and rather impressive development has just emerged. By going public, Facebook hoped to raise $5 billion. This figure has now risen to $10 billion, which would be yet another record in this technology sector.