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Facebook's $5 Billion IPO Filing: $3.7 Billion In 2011 Revenue

This article is more than 10 years old.

Social networking company Facebook just filed its S-1 document, showing plans to raise $5 billion in its initial public offering.

The numbers are very large even considering the outsized expectations. Revenue was $3.71 billion in 2011, up 88% year-over-year from $1.97 billion, and net income was $1.0 billion, up 65% year-over-year from $606 million. Yes, you read that correctly. The company plans to list under the ticker "FB," though it did not indicate which exchange it would be on. Earnings per diluted share for Class A and Class B stockholders was 46 cents.

Facebook now has 845 million monthly active users up 39% year-over-year as of Dec. 31, 2011, according to the filing. It also has 2.7 billion Likes and comments per day and 250 million photos uploaded per day. Daily active users were 483 million, up 48% year-over-year.

In terms of engagement, a key metric, is daily active users as a percentage of monthly active users. That is, how much monthly active users come back every day. That number is 57% as of Dec. 2011, up from 54% in Dec. 2010. That shows that Facebook users are even more addicted to the site now than a year ago.

On its balance sheet, Facebook shows cash, cash equivalents or marketable securities of $3.91 billion in the bank.

In its "risk factors" section, Facebook makes an interesting note about its relationship with Zynga. Zynga accounted for 12% of Facebook's 2011 revenue or about $445 million from payments are direct payments and advertising purchased by Zynga. That doesn't even include ads that Facebook runs with Zynga's games. Facebook in the filing says, "If the use of Zynga games on our Platform declines, if Zynga launches games on or migrates games to competing platforms, or if we fail to maintain good relations with Zynga, we may lose Zynga as a significant Platform developer and our financial results may be adversely affected."

Lead banker on the deal, as has been reported, is Morgan Stanley, with J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and Allen & Co. also participating.

Major shareholders are CEO Mark Zuckerberg with 28.2% voting power, venture capital firm Accel Partners with 11.4%, Russia-based firm Digital Sky Technologies with 5.5% and Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz with 7.6%. Early Facebook angel Peter Thiel has 2.5% voting power.

Goldman Sachs owns 56.3% of Class A shares and DST holds 31.4% of Class A shares, with T. Rowe Price holding 5.2% of Class A shares. Others including board members and directors with less than 1% stock and voting power include Sheryl Sandberg, David Ebersman, Mike Schroepfer, Theodore Ullyot, Marc Andreessen, Erskine Bowles, Donald Graham and Reed Hastings.

Previously known investors are Accel Partners, Greylock Partners, Meritech Capital Partners, Founders Fund, Microsoft, European Founders Fund, Digital Sky Technologies and Elevation Partners, Goldman Sachs. Individual investors are Li Ka-shing, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, and Mark Pincus.

One other note from the filing: on mobile, Facebook has 425 million monthly active users as of Dec. 2011. Facebook expects growth in mobile users to be higher than overall growth--in other words its desktop website.