Facebook Secrets In Filing For $5B IPO

The Facebook filing values Mark Zuckerberg stake at $16 billion. Facebook said its 27-year-old founder and CEO owns more than a  quarter of the company, or roughly 534 million shares. Those are just some of the numbers in the SEC filing to issue stock that will trade under the symbol “FB.” Facebook says that it generated $1B in net income last year, up 65% from 2010, on revenues of $3.7B, up 88%. It has 845M monthly active users, 100B friendships, and 2.7B likes and comments per day. But Zuckerberg warns potential investors in the filing that Facebook “was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected….Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services. And we think this is a good way to build something. These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.”

Like many Silicon Valley execs, Zuckerberg expects his stock to provide his personal financial reward. Before the IPO he controls 56.9% of Facebook’s voting shares. That mostly comes from his control of 1.1B Class B shares which have 10 votes apiece as opposed to the Class A shares to be sold to the public which have 1 vote apiece. His compensation package last year came to $1.5M (including $483,333 in salary, $220,500 in bonus, and $783,529 in other compensation.) At the beginning of this year his base salary was cut to $1. But his lieutenant, COO Sheryl Sandberg, made $39.9M which includes $30.5M in stock awards. The company says that due to its high visibility, and Zuckerberg’s importance, it paid for “the initial procurement, installation and maintenance of security measures for Mr. Zuckerberg’s personal residence” as well as “the annual costs of security personnel.” As part of the security program, Zuckerberg and his family also can use the company aircraft for personal trips. Last year $692,679 of his compensation came from personal use of the aircraft.