BUSINESS
April 24, 2012 | By Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times
SAN FRANCISCO — The rapid growth of Facebook Inc. showed signs of slowing in the first quarter, potentially cooling investors' fervor just weeks before the company's hotly anticipated initial public stock offering. Facebook generated $1.06 billion in sales, the second quarter in a row sales topped $1 billion. That represented a 45% jump from a year earlier but a 6% decline compared with the fourth quarter. The financial performance, the company's most anemic since at least 2010, fell below analysts' expectations.
BUSINESS
March 13, 2012 | By Walter Hamilton
First came Dow 13,000. Now comes Nasdaq 3,000. Solid economic news and no unpleasant surprises from the Federal Reserve's policymaking meeting propelled a vibrant stock-market rally that also pushed the Dow Jones industrial average up 218 points. The Nasdaq jumped 56.22 points, or 1.9%, to 3,039.88, its highest close in more than 11 years. The index has surged 16.7% this year amid investor excitement over the technology sector, spurred in part by a string of initial public offerings of social-media companies that is expected to hit its zenith later this year with the debut of Facebook Inc. Of course, the Nasdaq has seen 3,000 before - during the dot-com bubble in which the index eventually topped 5,000 before plummeting in the bust that took hold in early 2000 and stretched for nearly three years.
BUSINESS
March 8, 2012 | By W.J. Hennigan
Fender Musical Instruments Corp., the iconic company that has been making guitars in California since its inception in 1946, is seeking to raise $200 million in an initial public stock offering. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday, Fender said it intends to use the money to help pay down $246.2 million in debt and to acquire other businesses. Although its corporate headquarters are now in Scottsdale, Ariz., the company was founded in Fullerton and makes its American Standard Stratocaster and Telecaster guitars at a 3-acre manufacturing plant in Corona.
BUSINESS
February 25, 2012 | Jessica Guynn
Facebook's status used to be measured in the meteoric number of users who flocked to the world's most popular online hangout. Now Wall Street is wielding a very different yardstick. It's focused on how many ads Facebook can sell. The market value of the social networking giant could top $100 billion in the biggest ever initial public offering for an Internet company. To earn that valuation, Facebook, which made nearly all of its $3.7 billion in revenue last year from advertising, is going to have to turn big brands into paying customers.
BUSINESS
February 18, 2012 | By Tiffany Hsu, Los Angeles Times
Yelp Inc., the popular Internet site for customer-written reviews of restaurants, hotels and other services, expects its shares to hit the market at a price of $12 to $14 each, giving the company a value of as much as $840 million. The company said in a regulatory filing this week that it hopes to raise about $100 million in its initial public offering of more than 7.1 million shares. Its charitable foundation will sell 50,000 shares in the IPO, planned for early March. It plans to sell nearly 12% of the nearly 60 million total shares outstanding.
BUSINESS
February 2, 2012 | By Matt Stevens, Los Angeles Times
No one knows Facebook better than Facebook. Only seconds after the company's huge initial public stock offering was announced, Facebook users flooded the social network with comments. "Based on my news feeds, you would think Zuck just took over the world. Oh, Facebook," said Amanda Coolong, producer of a technology news site. "OOO What I could give to be able to get in on this," wrote Alexander Henry Sargent, expressing the oft-repeated hope that shares would be available to the common user.