Facebook is expected to finally file its initial public offering next week, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The financials are still fuzzy, but Facebook could possibly go for a valuation between $75 billion to $100 billion, and the social networking giant could raise approximately $10 billion with an IPO to achieve that valuation.
Morgan Stanley is also said to be the lead underwriter.
Rumors and questions about Facebook going public have been brewing for years, but the fervor reached a breaking point in 2011.
During the eG8 in Paris in May, CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented that Facebook would not be going public anytime soon. At a press event in December to debut Facebook’s new engineering office in New York City, COO Sheryl Sandberg also kept mum.
Last June, CNBC already reported that Facebook declare by the end of the first quarter of 2012 with a valuation of $100 billion. Naturally, that led to speculation about whether or not Facebook is even worth that much.
Earlier this week, Facebook was rumored to be halting the trading of shares for three days starting on January 25 until January 27 — raising eyebrows and hype again that a Facebook IPO is imminent.
It’s possible that Facebook has waited this long to declare an IPO until it became clear that it wouldn’t have trouble getting investors. Facebook has a number of flowing revenue streams and projects that are growing, including advertising, gaming, and its new Open Graph platform with partners, just to name a few.
But the Palo Alto, Calif.-based operation was potentially also wary after seeing what happened to a few other tech companies that went public and burned rather quickly in 2011, such as Groupon, Pandora, and even Zynga.
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