Brace yourself: The 2.0's are coming!
The Web 2.0's, that is. Here's the rundown on all the social media IPOs in the works. Exciting times to be in the market.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, speaks on the opening day of the Web 2.0 Conference at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco, in October 2007. As the social media companies prepare to jump into public trading, investors brace for the impact. Does this mean you need to run out and buy them all? No. But you shouldn't ignore them, either.
David M. Barreda / San Jose Mercury News / MCT / Newscom / File
There Will Be Froth.
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Joshua has been managing money for high net worth clients, charitable foundations, corporations and retirement plans for more than a decade.
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Good, it's a wake-up call for investors and inventors and I love it. In late December, I was on CNBC talking about 3 Investment Themes for 2011 and this Social IPO Explosion was the first thing I mentioned (video here).
I'm so not a naysayer about this stuff, I'm actually really excited about the Web 2.0 IPOs. Let's do a quick rundown of what we can expect as the social media start-ups come to market...
Groupon, without having done even $500 million in sales yet, turned down Google's ($GOOG) $6 billion offer and is now attracting a pre-IPO valuation of $15 billion! Goldman's Lloyd Blankfein hopped a flight to Chicago this week to meet with the kids running this two-year-old company in the hopes of edging out Morgan Stanley's deal team for the IPO.
This is coolness, guys.
There's another name out there, LivingSocial, said to be a baby Groupon in the making. They've just raised like $180 million with Amazon ($AMZN) having put in $175 million of it. Web 1.0 e-commerce companies like Amazon can't afford to miss this boat and Jeff Bezos knows it.
How about LinkedIn? This will probably be the first of the social media IPOs of 2011. BofA / Merrill Lynch is said to be lined up as lead underwriter and valuation talk is somewhere north of $2 billion. I'd bet the shares open with a nice premium as there will be insatiable demand for the lead stock in the category. Fundamentals we'll worry about down the road. By the way, don't be surprised to see a Bloomberg or a Thompson Reuters or even Dow Jones make a run at this thing or take a big stake before the offering.
Also on the runway is social games maker Zynga, which if Activision ($ATVI) or Electronic Arts ($ERTS) have any sense will get swallowed up pre-IPO.
