December 29, 2010|By Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times
Reporting from San Francisco — Facebook Inc. has tripled in value in the last 12 months to $42 billion as private trading in the company has surged.
Investors are scrambling to get a piece of companies taking part in the social networking boom such as Twitter Inc., Zynga Inc. and LinkedIn Corp., driving valuations to sky-high levels. The combined value of the top 11 privately held venture-backed technology businesses has risen 54% since June, according to a study from Nyppex, a brokerage firm that facilitates trading in private companies.
Facebook's latest valuation, according to trading on SharesPost Inc., an online marketplace that trades in shares of private companies, is greater than that for Internet giants EBay Inc. or Yahoo Inc.
"Over the years people have paid premiums for the companies best positioned for long-term growth and margin expansion. For good reason, Facebook is perceived of as one of those companies," Standard & Poor's analyst Scott Kessler said. "Whether or not at this point in its life cycle it deserves to demand a valuation that essentially makes it the second- or third-most valuable Internet company on the planet is an open question."
SharesPost in San Bruno, Calif., and SecondMarket in New York are among a handful of private stock exchanges that have sprung up to help wealthy and institutional investors trade stock in start-ups without having to wait for an initial public offering that could be months or years away. Former employees and early-stage venture capitalists sell stock on the exchanges.
The surge in trading activity has reportedly drawn the scrutiny of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has sent information requests to some of the participants in part to understand how many new Facebook shareholders the trading has created.
The move raises thorny issues for Facebook, the most actively traded technology company on the private markets. It wants to keep the number of its shareholders under 500 to avoid having to disclose financial information to prospective investors. Federal law limits private companies to fewer than 500 shareholders. Once a company reaches that threshold, it must register its private shares with the SEC.
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https://articles.latimes.com/2010/dec/29/business/la-fi-1230-facebook-20101230