Ricardo Sanchez

This past month was very memorable for the world of tech and a very important day in Wall Street with Facebook’s IPO. A company who started in 2004 was worth $104 billion for one day, on paper. Underwriters valued the shares at $38 each, pricing the company at $104 billion, the largest valuation to date for a newly public company. On May 16, one day before the IPO, Facebook announced that it would sell 25% more shares than originally planned due to high demand. The IPO raised $16 billion, making it the third largest in U.S. history (just ahead of AT&T Wireless and behind only General Motors and Visa). The stock price left the company with a higher market capitalization than all but a few U.S. corporations – surpassing heavyweights such as Amazon.com, McDonald’s, Disney, and Kraft – and made Zuckerberg’s stock worth $19 billion. And this only lasted a day or two since the stock tanked shortly after and this morning it was at $31.74.