Facebook files for $5 billion IPO

At long last, the Holy Grail of Internet IPOs is here. Facebook filed Wednesday to raise $5 billion in an initial public offering.
In 2011, Facebook earned $1 billion on sales of $3.7 billion. As of December 31, Facebook had 845 million monthly active users.

The company crossed the line into profitability in 2009, five years after it launched in founder Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room. Facebook earned $229 million that year on sales of $777 million, and has remained profitable ever since.
It's not yet known on which stock exchange Facebook will trade, though it said it plans to use the ticker symbol "FB."
Facebook will likely re-file its paperwork several times over the coming months. Those updates will add more details and could even restate some of the financial information detailed in Wednesday's filing.
In this initial paperwork, companies don't declare how many shares they're going to sell, or how much those shares will cost. Those details will be added in an updated filing shortly before trading begins.
Without that share price information, Facebook's valuation is still speculative.
Facebook has its own guesses, though. The company said it conducted its own valuation of its stock at the end of each quarter, and as of December 31 determined it to be worth $29.73 a share.

Click here to continue reading: http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/01/technology/facebook_ipo/index.htm