Facebook Sets $28 To $35 IPO Price Range

It’s the day techies and investors have been waiting for: Facebook set a price range of $28 to $35 per share for its initial public offering. It also upped the maximum size of its offering to $13.6 billion, up from its previous $5 billion estimate.

Facebook currently has around 2.1 billion shares outstanding, so if its IPO prices at the top of the range, the company would be valued at just shy of $75 billion.

Many Facebook employees and executives, including Zuckerberg, hold unexercised stock options. The company itself is also holding some shares for future employee equity grants. If all of those shares were exercised, Facebook’s outstanding share count would rise to around 2.8 billion, pushing its valuation closer to $98 billion.

Facebook’s target price range isn’t binding, and could change several times before Facebook actually makes its debut. The company will set its final price the night before it begins trading. That’s expected to happen sometime in mid-May, with May 18 the current target date according to CNN.

Institutional investors who purchase shares directly from Facebook’s underwriters, including lead banker Morgan Stanley, will buy in at the IPO price. Regular investors will get their shot the next day, when Facebook begins trading on the tech-heavy Nasdaq exchange under the ticker “FB.”

The target range set on Thursday could be lowballing. Facebook said in a filing last month that it internally valued its shares at $30.89 each, as of January 31 — up from $29.73 a month earlier.

Facebook’s user base is growing. The site had 901 million monthly active users as of March 31, up 33% compared to the same date last year. User growth is fastest in Brazil, India, and the United States, Facebook said.