Facebook IPO

Facebook IPO raised the roof off Wall Street — in more ways than one as it turned out — with its initial public offering, which had a target valuation on the social-media giant as high as $104 billion.

An image of Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Facebook Inc.

To see where Facebook’s IPO stands now, here are some questions and answers, with updates as they happen.

When did the IPO take place?

Because of a technical delay at Nasdaq, the stock opening took place at 11:30 a.m. EDT on Friday, May 18, instead of 11 a.m., with an opening price of $38 per share (see more below) and the ticker symbol was “FB” [FB 28.84 -3.07 (-9.62%) ] .

The price actually opened at $42.05 a share after investors immediately jumped in with the ceremonial 100 share lot.

Some 82 million shares were traded in the first 30 seconds. Seven minutes after the opening, 110 million shares had traded, with the stock eventually reaching a high of $45 a share. By 3:30 pm EDT Friday, Facebook volume — shares traded — set the record by exceeding General Motors' [GM 22.85 0.41 (+1.83%) ] 458 million shares on its first day of trading.

As trading went back and forth, so did the price. Less than 20 minutes after the opening, prices fell below $39. It did reach a high of $45 a share.

As of 12:43 p.m. EDT, nearly 300 million shares had traded. At the market close of 4 p.m. EDT, the price was listed as $38.23.

The total volume of 573,622,571 was 21.4 percent of the Nasdaq composite. It was certainly the most active stock on the Nasdaq exchange.

One note worth mentioning: Stocks closed at lows on Friday, with all three major averages posting their worst weekly drop so far this year.

As mentioned above, the sale was supposed to start at 11 a.m. EDT — but Nasdaq, the exchange selling the stock — had problems delivering what's called the opening print, and traders were having difficulty canceling and/or changing orders before the stock sale began. Nasdaq says it will look into what happened.

And late word Friday has the Securities and Exchange Commission set to look into what happened.

The sheer volume of the IPO shares was said to be the reason for the delay. Orders for trades started before 11 a.m. EDT. Quoting for the stock began at 10:45 a.m. EDT.

Expected to raise some $16 billion, it's the largest Internet IPO in the U.S. and the third largest IPO ever — behind Visa [V 120.28 0.91 (+0.76%) ] in 2008 and Italian utility firm Enel SPA in 1999.

Some 421 million shares of Facebook [FB 28.84 -3.07 (-9.62%) ] were offered at the opening. The number of shares going to small investors is still to be worked out. The numbers that have been mentioned range between 15 percent to 25 percent of the total shares going to smaller investors.

Twenty-eight-year-old CEO Mark Zuckerberg rang the Nasdaq opening bell remotely from Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters on Friday. He's got a lot to ring in: His reported take from the IPO is said to be some $19.1 billion.

To get investors interested, Facebook's roadshow began on May 7 at Morgan Stanley to some 'mixed reviews.'

But Facebook changed its pitch: A 30-minute video was scrapped and the company took more questions from analysts and potential investors. That was a big complaint during the New York City presentation — not enough time for the Q&A.

But reports say the newer presentation went over much better. The roadshow drew crowds of investors from coast to coast.

Facebook closed the books on its IPO on May 15, two days ahead of schedule, in a signal that the landmark initial share sale was drumming up strong demand.

Some dates mentioned for the IPO were in late May or early June. The reason there could have been delays for the IPO was because of Facebook’s $1 billion acquisition of Instagram and its deal with Microsoft [MSFT 29.56 0.50 (+1.72%) ] .

The Securities and Exchange Commission has to okay the Instagram buy — as well as the Microsoft patent deal — and while both are expected to be approved, there could be some unforeseen complications.

Facebook is still waiting for the official SEC okay, but people close to the matter said the company wanted to get on with marketing the IPO.

The Federal Trade Commission reportedly has launched an investigation into the deal, collecting information from at least one of the social network’s largest competitors. The process could also further slow Facebook’s already lagging mobile strategy.

This type of probe — called a competition probe — is routine for any deal more than $66 million. It's likely to take six to 12 months. For its part, Facebook said in its IPO documents last month that it expected the deal to close in the second quarter.

For the record, Facebook filed for its IPO on Feb. 1, 2012. The company sent an amended IPO filing to the SEC on May 3. As noted above, the ticker symbol is “FB.”