（文本为视频大致内容，可能与视频并非完全一致，欢迎大家贡献听写稿^^）

Vast online social network Facebook has made a much-anticipated status update saying the company is finally going public. Facebook's debut is the most talked-about IPO since Google went public in 2004. The company - created in a Harvard dormitory almost eight years ago - is on track to be the largest Internet IPO ever. Facebook says it wants to raise five billion US dollars.
Sources close to the company say the actual target could be a valuation of as much as 75 to 100 billion. But nay-sayers are pouring a splash of cold water on all the excitement. They say the question is how to turn a swelling friends list into a steady revenue stream.

It’s been a long time coming but California-based online social network Facebook has finally taken its first steps towards becoming a publicly-traded company. And if the company proves as popular with investors as it is with its 845 million plus users worldwide - Facebook will probably make its stock-market debut in three or four months time, as one of the world’s most valuable companies. It’s a long way from the Harvard dorm room where computer whiz kid Mark Zuckerberg first came up with the service, intended to keep the Ivy League school community connected.

In its regulatory filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Facebook says it hopes to raise five billion U.S. dollars by going public. That would be the largest internet IPO on record, even bigger than the 2004 Google IPO and the landmark listing of Netscape before that. Analysts predict Facebook’s market value could hit 100 billion U.S. dollars, based on Facebook’s rapid growth: investors have already been steered to buy stakes while the company was still private.

Facebook has hired the industry’s big guns to manage the IPO, with its fleet of underwriters including Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch, Barclays Capital and Allen & Company. But it’s something of a sore point for Goldman Sachs, which failed to secure the coveted lead role in the IPO - after scuttling a private sale of Facebook’s stocks to U.S. investors a year ago.

Meantime, some analysts have their doubts about whether Facebook will deliver after cashing in on its popularity. The company relies almost entirely on advertising and the sale of virtual goods for its revenue stream, and makes a modest sum on a per-user basis. Last year, that number was just a little over one U.S. dollar per Facebook user.

Last year, the company recorded revenue of 3.7 billion U.S. dollars, and a profit of one billion dollars. That’s an 88 percent increase year-on-year, but is a drop in the ocean compared to the size of rival Google - the search engine giant raked in revenue of almost 38 billion dollars last year.

Detractors say - Facebook’s sure got a lot of friends, but where’s the cash? They’re concerned some investors will become so enamoured with Facebook’s brand and brawn, that they will buy in with little financial analysis or recognition of the risks.

Brian Hamilton, Co-founder & CEO of Sageworks said: "Facebook is the dominant company in its position. It is the social media empire. So the branding is great, the consumers like it, it’s growing. There is some question by the way as to whether or not they’re bumping up against demand, but this whole IPO is about valuation. If you’re coming in right now and the company is priced too high it leaves potential for downside on price in six months to a year."

With worries about a possible price shrink in the near future, analysts still put the valuation of the company as the top concern.

Hamilton said: "Based on preliminary numbers, this company could trade between 18 and 25 times sales and basically almost at 50 to 100 times profit. Which you know is really a rich valuation. It looks like there’s positive cash flow from operations, it looks like there’s positive earnings - that’s positive. However, again you really have to look at the valuation of the company, what is it based upon? it means that the company quite frankly is priced in a very rich way. "

Facebook stocks would trade under the ticker FB, on either the Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange. Even before the IPO was filed, Zuckerberg was shaping up as his generation’s Bill Gates, both making the complete transformation from computer geeks to two of the world’s most iconic tech successes.

Some speculate, depending on how long regulators take to review Facebook’s IPO application, the company could be making its stock market debut around the time that Zuckerberg celebrates his next birthday in May. Not a bad birthday present, for a young man who’s yet to turn 30.

声明：音视频均来自互联网链接，仅供学习使用。本网站自身不存储、控制、修改被链接的内容。"沪江英语"高度重视知识产权保护。当如发现本网站发布的信息包含有侵犯其著作权的链接内容时，请联系我们，我们将依法采取措施移除相关内容或屏蔽相关链接。