Nightly News   |  May 17, 2012

‘This isn’t some spring chicken company’

CNBC’s technology correspondent Jon Fortt explains the first people who stand to profit from the Facebook IPO are the early investors who sell their shares Friday when the stock becomes available to the general public.

Share This:

This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>>> from silicon valley to the wall street banks to the individual investor, the big story tonight is facebook going public . the social networking giants priced its initial public sck offering tonight at $38 a share, which is the upper end of what a lot of the analysts were estimating. that will give t company a valuation of $104 billion. making it the biggest ever valuation of a company in its public debut . facebook has 900 million users around the world. and at least some of them will want to own the stock, which begins trading on the nasdaq tomorrow. with us tonight from facebook corporate headquarters in california, cnbc's technology correspondent john fort , and john, how does this work? who gets first crack, and what about the folks everywhere who night want a share or two of facebook stock?

>> as you suggested, if you're online, chances are facebook owns a piece of you, your pictures, your friend list. here's a chance to own a piece of facebook . once it goes ipo tomorrow around 11:00 eastern, anyone can buy it. the question is whether it's a good investment. this isn't some spring chicken company that nobody knows about. it's going public , as you said, as a very, very expensive company. the people who are really going to make out are the early investors who are selling their shares to the rest of us, the public, tomorrow. mark zuckerberg is trying to make sure things don't change too much when the company goes public. that's why he wore his hoodie to wall street , why he's going to be with the engineers, countin code, not their profits.