Facebook Approaches IPO Price, Some Say It’s Overvalued

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For the first time since Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s initial public offering, shares are approaching the $38 per share opening value. The stock has risen almost 6 percent today and at this moment is trading at less than 60 cents away from its IPO. Investors have been awarding the social network for its most recent earnings report.

Facebook Approaches IPO Price, Some Say It’s Overvalued

Not everyone is happy with Facebook

In light of the amazing rally Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has seen in the last week, some are now saying that the stock is overvalued. MarketWatch’s Mark Hulbert says the social network “still has a long way to go to justify its current stock price.”

He said assuming a 15 percent annual return for Facebook by May 2017, the company’s market cap would end up being almost $149.8 billion, although it currently sits at only $88.1 billion. He looked at the mean price to sales ratio of companies in the Dow Jones U.S. Internet Index, which happens to be 5.87 to 1 on the day they mark five years as a public company.

According to Hulbert, that means Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s annual revenue would have to hit $25.5 billion by 2017 in order to make the market cap it needs to make the stock worth its current price. He said that’s more than four times more than the current $6.1 billion in sales the social network has recorded over the last year. He notes that even analysts are expecting only $14.3 billion in revenue for 2016, which is the latest year consensus estimates are recorded by FactSet.

He also reports that if using the 5.87 to 1 ratio, then that would make Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s market cap only $83.9 billion, which is less than it is right now.

Facebook wants a piece of the gaming pie

Today Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) also announced at the Casual Connect conference that it was getting into the mobile game publishing market. With over 800 million mobile users every month, the company stands to increase its revenue significantly if it makes headway in mobile gaming. TechCrunch’s Kim-Mai Cutler reports that the company is reaching out to developers who want to participate in their program, although it did not say what kind of revenue share it wanted in return for publishing the games.

The pilot program will enable small and medium game developers to expose their games to the world because it tends to be very expensive for new mobile developers to reach their audiences because the app charts have become rather stable over the last year.

At this point, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has signed about 10 developers. Sources told TechCrunch that the program is designed for independent developers who are trying to keep with the companies which have multi-million-dollar budgets for marketing.

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