Facebook IPO: what’s for tech investment and media executive jobs market?
At the time of writing Facebook’s value is down 11% with shares valued at $34, having peaked at $42 on Friday several hours after the start of trading.
Many have questioned where the value in the brand lies – it clearly is not in its existing revenues – it “only” made revenues of $3.7bn in 2011 and General Motors decided to pull its £10m ad account from the social media platform just days before IPO. Surely the value in the business lies in the user data it holds. Facebook need to fine-tune a way of monetising this data without having to compromise user confidentiality.
Okay, so the IPO “pop” that was expected didn’t surface but compared to other tech IPOs, Facebook is historically still a strong performer. It would be interesting to see what effect its modest debut has on the tech investment community and the media executive jobs market going forward….
Martin Tripp Associates is a London-based executive search consultancy. While we are best-known for our work in the TMT (technology, media, and telecoms) space, we have also worked with some of the world’s biggest brands on challenging senior positions. Feel free to contact us to discuss any of the issues raised in this blog.