Facebook at $38: Buy or Sell?

In the biggest financial news since the economic collapse of 2008, social media titan Facebook will become a publicly-traded corporation tomorrow. The company announced an opening price of $38 per share today, making it one of the largest initial public offerings ever.

How are local investors reacting?

"I'm getting a lot of inquiries," , of Edward Jones Investments in Warren, said. He added he's been hearing from some of his clients who normally aren't interested in buying IPOs.

But he's not too keen on helping his clients buy tomorrow—before the IPO price was announced, he noted if priced at $35 per share, the stock would be selling at 80 times the company's earnings.

"That's like hamburger selling for $50 a pound," he said. "I know if hamburger should sell for 50 cents or $4, but at $50, I'm pretty sure that's too high."

Drasin said he doesn't encourage his clients to buy IPOs on the first day, especially when there is so much attention focused on it, unless they have been able to secure shares at the IPO price.

If history is any guide, he said the price will go up dramatically tomorrow immediately after the stock goes on sale but will almost certainly fall back shortly after.

agrees.  

"It's just your typical supply and demand," John Faron, a financial advisor and Registered Representative at LPL Financial in Green Brook, said. LPL Financial primarily focuses on retirement planning, Faron said, adding his office doesn't work in IPOs, although he did have a client who bought the IPO of Twitter when it went public. He said one customer did call, seeking more information about the Facebook IPO.

But he said he's not convinced Facebook will have the revenue needed to justify the share price, either.

"I'm a little more skeptical as to the projection of it," he said. "It should be interesting to see how the advertising projections come in."

He added people interested in investing in social media companies but not wanting to put too many eggs in one website's basket can invest in an Exchange Traded Fund for social media companies, kind of a mutual fund with investments in a range of social media companies.   

"it gives the average investor the chance to get in on that," he said.

And if you're wondering about the wisdom of holding an IPO in a long recession, Drasin pointed out a number of companies launching during difficult economic times have done quite well: Apple and Microsoft launched during the stagflation days of 1980, and Google's IPO came at the tail end of the "Tech Wreck," the collapse of tech stock prices between 2000 and 2004.

And when all is said and done, Facebook creator Marc Zuckerberg will be a certified gazillionaire.

"Only in America can you go from zero dollars to $100 billion," Drasin said.