Damp squib: Facebook shares close with near-zero gains

1:35 am: Trading is finally over. And it was a bit of a damp squib. The biggest tech IPO in history made an unimpressive debut and closed a marginal 0.4 percent higher at $38.16 (provisional estimate), a few pennies above the offer price of $38. Given the technical glitches that hampered trading throughout the session, you can be sure that neither investors nor Nasdaq will be wearing happy faces. There’s going to be disappointment for the people at Facebook as well. The whole thing feels a lot like an anti-climax.

1:28 am: Last three minutes of trade and its crazy volatile. The stock price climbed marginally to $38.35 and then went back to $38.07.

1:20 am: Ten minutes to go and shares hit $38 repeatedly. What a nailbiter! Will the stock close with zero gains? Worse, will it fall BELOW the offer price?

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1:05 am: Twenty minutes to go before trading closes and Facebook’s shares are wobbling at $38.02. That may seem disappointing to the rest of us, but don’t forget, founder Mark Zuckerberg is still on course to become the world’s 23rd richest person on the planet. That, too, at the age of 28. So yeah, history is being created here, just not for the stock price.

12:55 am: Gosh, the stock is now at $38.06.

12:48 am: Are investors pressing the ‘unlike’ button on Facebook? Its shares have again slipped dangerously close to the $38 offer price level, now trading at $38.26. It’s the last hour of trading. So not what Facebook – or its supporters – would have wanted.

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11:00 pm: Oops, more hiccups for Facebook’s stock listing. Apparently, several traders have received no confirmation of their orders, which means large, institutional investors have no idea if their orders to buy or sell have been accepted by the system, or even at what prices these orders will be confirmed. Scary.

Nasdaq, meanwhile, says it is sending messages to brokers about their pending orders. In the age of stock trading by the millisecond, this fiasco makes the tech exchange look really bad. Facebook’s shares are now up to $41, but seems to be stuck in the $40-$41 range now. At least it didn’t fall below the offer price of $38. So much for expectations of a blockbuster debut by the largest tech IPO in history.

10:35 pm: Televisionexperts are talking about Nasdaq having issues with completing trade orders for Facebook. Bad for Facebook and Nasdaq. Facebook’s mega-hyped IPO was supposed to be Nasdaq’s crowning glory, but these ’execution delays’ are going to cause any company planning the next big IPO to think twice about listing there. We still don’t know why Facebook’s listing was inexplicably delayed for nearly 30 minutes.

10:30 pm: It increasingly feels like there will be no spectacular gains on the first day of listing for Facebook. Right now, itdoesn’t look like the listing will go the way of Renren, one of China’s biggest social networking websites, which listed last year with a 29 percent gain, or LinkedIn, which debuted with a 100 percent jump over its offer price.

Nevertheless, that doesn’t take away the fact that Facebook’s IPO debut makes it a corporate heavyweight. Go, Facebook!

10:10 pm: Bloomberg UTV just showed a clip of Facebook founder Mark Zukcerberg speaking after remotely ringing the opening bell on Nasdaq. He said that while going public seems like a big deal, Facebook’s mission was not to create a publicly listed company. “Our mission is to create a more open and connected world,” he said. And yes, if you were wondering, he was wearing his trademark hoodie.

Currently, Facebook is trading at $40. Doesn’t look like it’s going to go much higher than that. Media reports said that as Facebook’s shares dipped, some other new tech stocks took a beating, in particular Yelp, Pandora, Zillow, and Zynga.

9:50 pm: Facebook’s shares have inched higher to $40. But that’s still disppointing to most of us who had expected the shares to breach the $50-$60 mark. On TV and financial websites, some experts are already suggesting it’s a flop show. Not too many ’likes’ from investors, it seems.

9:41 pm: Well, now Nasdaq is claiming that it is facing some problems in delivering trade execution messages for Facebook. New York Stock Exchange, the rival that lost out to Nasdaq, must be enjoying this. Zuckerberg might be wondering about it too…

9:38 pm: Not $50 or $60. Facebook’s shares have slightly climbed to $39.42, 5 percent higher from the offer price. But it looks like it won’t be setting any records for setting any records for first-day listing gains. Facebook is getting a first-hand taste of the fickle mindedness of investors. Welcome to Wall Street, Facebook.

9:30 pm: Will the biggest Internet IPO in recent years end the first trading session below the offer price of $38 a share? That’s what everyone is talking about now. What a turnaround in sentiment. From wondering whether Facebook’s shares will set new records, we’re now pondering whether it will close below $38. Maybe Zuckerberg won’t be too keen on buying Greece now…

9:20 pm: Oooh, trouble in paradise? Facebook shares are now trading at $38.11, after opening at $42-$43. The hype is giving way to tension now.

9:15 pm: The third-biggest IPO in US history saw shares worth $4.5 billion being traded in the first five minutes of trading. Pretty impressive, huh? But the stock is still trading around $40. It’s a tad disappointing after all those expectations of 30 percent plus gains. Just to remind you, Facebook’s IPO price was $38 a share.

9:05 pm: Uh oh, minutes into trading the stock has lost some of its gains and is trading at $40.04, up just 5 percent from its offer price. Not a great sign.

8:57 pm: It’s happened! Opening trades at $42-$43 per share! That’s about 12 percent higher from the offer price.A whopping 82 million shares were traded in the first 30 seconds. The day’s high was $43.03 per share, according to Nasdaq’s website.

8:55 pm: Latest update: Traders are facing problems with order execution, according to CNBC. Could that possibly be because they are swamped with orders? And what does that mean for the stock price?

8:50 pm: Ironic. Technical hitch on a technology-dominated exchange for a technology stock listing. Ahh, the joys of technology….

8:45 pm: Nasdaq says it is experiencing a ‘delay’ in opening trade. Not sure what that means, but there it is. We have a delay, ladies and gentlemen.

8:40 pm: One TV commentator says people should be careful about “whipping themselves into a frenzy”. Really? Little late for that now. We’re all frothing at the mouth now about what price Facebook’s shares will debut. What’s taking so long? Last-minute hitch, it seems.

8:35 pm: Babble, babble, babble. TV commentators are still going on about how rich Zuckerberg will become after the IPO. We know that already. What’s the opening trade? This is probably going to become the most-watched business event this year.

8:30 pm: The suspense is killing. Now BBC News says trading will begin in 5 minutes. Oh, let’s get the opening trade already!

8:28 pm: Less than two minutes away…

8:20 pm: Minutes away from opening trade. Don’t go away!

8:00 pm: CNBC reports that ifZuckerberg were to sell his entire stake, he could buy Kellogs, Heinz or Yahoo. Maybe if he’s feeling really kind, he can buy debt-laden Greece and end all their miseries?

7:50 pm: Facebook’s premarket order book shows a price of $70 a share in Frankfurt, according to Bloomberg UTV. Another update: the stock is expected to be listed at 8:30 pm Indian time. That’s about 35 minutes away! The excitement is reaching fever pitch now. On CNBC, there are non-stop conversations about Facebook’s stock debut now.

7:45 pm: Nasdaq’s website has a banner welcoming Facebook. “Welcome, Facebook. To a more open and connected world”. Cute.

7:40 pm: A Daily Mail report expects Facebook shares to list 50 percent higher. Wow! Talk about creating wealth overnight. Now I wish I owned some Facebook shares.

7:35 pm: Still waiting for that first trade. Will Facebook’s stock market debut lead to a gush of more tech IPOs? All depends on how Facebook trades. Will the world’s biggest social networking website set a new stock record? And will this be thestart of another tech bubble?

Stay tuned, the stock is expected to make its first trade at 11:30 ET (9:00 pm).

7:20 pm: Investors – and tech geeks – are waiting with bated breath for sure for Facebook’s opening trade. Will investors push the price to extraordinary heights? Pre-debut, demand for the social networking giant’s shares was extremely high. At $38 a share, Facebook’s valuation of $104 billion is already significantly above the market caps of tech heavyweights Dell and HP.

7:00 pm: An exuberant Zuckerberg rings the opening bell on Nasdaq. The listing of Facebook is expected to create a lot of millionaires overnight.

6:55 pm: CNBC reports that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg will ring the opening bell on the Nasdaq at 9:30 am Eastern Time (7:00 pm). The company’s shares are expected to start trading at 11:30 ET (9:00 pm).

Facebook’s IPO is thelargest tech IPO in history. It is also the third-largest US IPO ever, according to CNN.

The social networking website IPO raised $16 billion from the IPO and has set its IPO price at $38 per share. The share price also values the company at a stunning $104 billion, which many experts think is ‘overpriced’. The $38 price gives Facebook a steep 107 price-to-earnings ratio. In comparison, Apple’s is around 13.

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Demand for Facebook’s shares blew away all estimates, prompting the company to eventually offer 25 percent more sharesthan originally planned.

Ordinary investors looking to get a piece of Facebook will be able to do so when the shares list on Friday on tech-laden Nasdaq.Nearly 60 percent of the stock being sold today will come from insiders, compared with 37 percent for Google when it went public in 2004.

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg plans to sell 30.2 million shares in the IPO offering. That will net Zuckerberg about $1.1 billion.

A Bloomberg report notes that the average first-day gains for a technology company are 32 percent, although Facebook’s shares gains are expected to be “more modest than average”.

Here in India, a lot of us will be watching the social media giant’d debut with excitement. If you think there’s no interest among Indians about Facebook, think again. India is set to overtake the US as the world’s largest Facebook market by number of users as early as 2015, according to social media experts, driven by growing Internet penetration and high rates of growth in mobile connections.

As Facebook`s third largest market, India is home to over 45 million users, behind Brazil and the United States with 47 and 157 million users, respectively, according to latest data from Facebook`s advertising platform.

Firstpost will be tracking Facebook’s debut on Nasdaq live. So stay tuned!