[ti:Facebook and Its Stock Offering] [ar:Mario Ritter] [al:Economics Report] [by:www.51voa.com] [00:00.00]This is the VOA Special English Economics Report. [00:05.25]Investors soon will be able to own shares of Facebook stock. [00:12.30]The world's biggest social media network [00:16.08]presented documents to the Securities [00:18.85]and Exchange Commission Wednesday. [00:21.27]The documents are required before the company [00:25.49]can make its initial public offering, or IPO. [00:30.18]A date for the stock sale has yet to be announced. [00:34.95]Experts say Facebook could raise about five billion dollars. [00:41.13]That would be one of the biggest IPO sales ever. [00:47.03]And it would be much bigger than Google's [00:50.75]first public stock sale in two thousand four. [00:54.29]At that time, the Internet search company [00:58.30]raised almost two billion dollars. [01:00.84]Facebook has eight hundred million users around the world. [01:05.79]It is the second most visited website after Google. [01:10.98]Now, experts say the social media network is in a position [01:16.67]to become one of the most valuable Internet companies. [01:20.34]Stock expert Anupam Palit at Greencrest Capital says [01:26.18]that among social media sites, [01:28.36]Facebook is in a class by itself. [01:32.12]ANUPAM PALIT: "It is the biggest company in this space [01:33.98]and we believe what makes it very unique [01:35.54]from every other company that went public last year [01:38.12]in this space is that it is very, very profitable." [01:40.35]Early estimates place the total value of the social network [01:44.28]between seventy-five and one hundred billion dollars. [01:48.47]That includes earlier investments by other companies. [01:53.08]David Kirkpatrick wrote the book "The Facebook Effect." [01:58.73]He says Facebook's IPO will be historic. [02:03.91]DAVID KIRKPATRICK: "Will Facebook's IPO be the biggest IPO [02:06.57]in American history, probably not, [02:08.35]but it will certainly be by far the biggest Internet [02:11.48]or technology IPO we've ever seen." [02:13.70]The stock sale is also could make Facebook founder [02:17.42]Mark Zuckerberg one of the world's youngest billionaires. [02:22.51]He is only twenty-seven. [02:24.88]Investment companies are likely to buy Facebook stock first. [02:30.29]But investment manager Jim O'Shaugnessy says that is not so bad. [02:36.71]He says the price of some IPO stocks are too high [02:41.38]and fall not long after they first go on sale. [02:46.41]JIM O'SHAUGHNESSY: "Many IPO's come out being very, very overvalued [02:50.10]because they get so hyped up and investors are so taken in [02:54.14]by the story that they're willing to pay any amount just [02:57.62]to be able to get into the stock. [03:00.04]That generally translates to being very overvalued. [03:02.98]So we generally tell investors that they should wait, [03:06.37]probably a good full year before they look [03:09.00]at buying stock that was recently IPO'd." [03:11.22]Recently, share prices of some Internet businesses [03:15.21]have fallen after their stock was first offered. [03:18.93]For example, stock of LinkedIn, Groupon and Zynga, [03:24.79]dropped in price by as much as twenty-five percent after going public. [03:30.50]There were similar questions eight years ago [03:34.38]when Google first sold stock to the public. [03:37.36]Today, Google is one of the world's most valuable technology companies. [03:43.78]And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report. [03:48.88]Find teaching and learning activities [03:52.80]in The Classroom at VOA Learning English. [03:57.47]I'm Mario Ritter.