Will Facebook become the next Yahoo ?

Seekingalpha – Facebook’s stock is currently burdened with billions of shares poised to be released from lockup in 2012. There are 1.7 billion shares of Facebook currently locked up. 271 million shares will be available for sale in 74 days. A majority of shares, 1.2 billion, will be released from lockup in mid-November. A small portion of shares are scheduled to be released from lockup past the end of the year. The release of shares from lock up prior to the end of the year is important due to the fact that capital gains tax rates are expected to rise in 2013. I believe this is why the IPO was scheduled for May. Zuckerberg has maximized profits on the IPO at every turn.

Facebook is currently trading at $26.44 per share with a market cap of $56.6 billion.

Facebook had a private valuation of $50 billion since January 2011

Venturebeat – Facebook had 400 employees in 2007 and 800 in 2008. employees were given restricted stock units starting in late 2008. In April 2011, Facebook had over 2000 employees across offices in 15 countries. Facebook had 3,539 full-time employees at the time of the IPO.

If Facebook goes to below $23 per share, that would probably put about 1500 Facebook employees under water (unless they received discounted shares.)

If Facebook shares go down to the $10-15 range and stay there that would mean Facebook would likely see a lot of employee turnover problems.

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