Facebook CEO says IPO made company stronger
By AP Wire Service on Sep 12, 2013, at 2:34 AM Updated on 9/12/13 at 4:10 AM
A Facebook employee walks past a sign at Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the IPO of his company, while initially criticized for lackluster stock performance, has benefitted the company and made it stronger. Associated Press file
Tech
Brazil plans to divorce itself from the U.S.-centric Internet over Washington's widespread online spying, a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous first step toward fracturing a global network built with minimal interference by governments.
In the smartphone world, Android has been a smashing success. It's evolved into a strong and easy-to-use experience, and it's the platform of choice for most of the top-selling devices out there.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg didn't really want to take his company public last year, but he has changed his mind now that the Internet social network's stock is steadily rising.
Zuckerberg told a San Francisco audience attending a technology conference that he believes the rigors of an initial public offering of stock completed 16 months ago turned Facebook Inc. into a stronger company.
"We run our company a lot better now," Zuckerberg said late Wednesday during an onstage interview at the conference put on by AOL Inc.'s TechCrunch blog. "In retrospect, I was too afraid of going public. I have been very outspoken about staying private as long as possible, but I don't think it's that necessary to do that."
The remarks came just a few hours after Facebook's stock hit its highest price since the IPO, which had been widely panned as a monumental flop until investors recently regained their faith in Zuckerberg and the Menlo Park, Calif., company.
Facebook's stock gained $1.44 to close at $45.04, slightly above the previous peak reached on its first day of trading in May 2012.
The current price may not look that impressive, given that it's just 18 percent above the $38 per share paid by investors who bought into the IPO.
By comparison, Standard & Poor's 500 index has risen by 29 percent during the same stretch. And the stock of online professional networking service LinkedIn Corp. - a much smaller company than Facebook - has increased by more than fivefold since it was priced at $45 in a May 2011 IPO.
But Facebook has made a remarkable recovery since bottoming out at $17.55 last September. It was hit by concerns about the company's slowing growth and skepticism about Zuckerberg's ability to sell more advertising on the mobile devices that have become the social network's main conduit with its 1.1 billion monthly users.
Zuckerberg predicted Facebook would build a thriving mobile business when he appeared at TechCrunch's conference last year, and now Wall Street believes him. Facebook left little doubt it's now heading in right direction when it released second-quarter results in late July that topped analysts' projections and showed that 41 percent, or $656 million, of the company's digital advertising revenue now comes from mobile phones and tablet computers.
Since those numbers came out, Facebook's stock has surged by 66 percent. No one has benefited from the gain more than Zuckerberg, who has seen the value of his Facebook stock soar from $16 billion to $27 billion in less than two months.
Tech
Brazil plans to divorce itself from the U.S.-centric Internet over Washington's widespread online spying, a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous first step toward fracturing a global network built with minimal interference by governments.
In the smartphone world, Android has been a smashing success. It's evolved into a strong and easy-to-use experience, and it's the platform of choice for most of the top-selling devices out there.
