NEW YORK — It was barely a “like” and definitely not a “love” from Facebook investors as the online social network’s stock failed to live up to the hype in its trading debut Friday.
One of the most highly anticipated IPOs in Wall Street history ended on a bland note, with Facebook’s stock closing at $38.23, up 23 cents from Thursday night’s pricing.
That meant the company, founded in 2004 in a Harvard dorm room, is worth about $105 billion, more than , McDonald’s, and Silicon Valley icons Hewlett-Packard and Cisco.
It also gave 28-year-old chief executive Mark Zuckerberg a stake worth $19,252,698,725.50.
“Going public is an important milestone in our history,” Zuckerberg said before he symbolically rang Nasdaq’s opening bell from company headquarters at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park, Calif. “But here’s the thing: Our mission isn’t to be a public company. Our mission is to make the world more open and connected.”
But for many seeking a big first-day pop in Face book’s share price, the single-digit increase was somewhat of a letdown.
“This is like kissing your sister,” said John Fitzgibbon, founder of IPO Scoop, a research firm. “With all the drumbeats and hype, I don’t think there’ll be barroom bragging tonight.”
By the end of the day, about 570 million shares had changed hands, a huge trading volume for any company.
TD Ameritrade reported that in the first 45 minutes of trading, Facebook accounted for a record 24 percent of trades executed by its customers.
