May 18, 2012 — Facebook IPO

On May 18, 2012, Facebook held one of the most talked-about IPOs in tech history. Mark Zuckerberg’s company listed its shares on the NASDAQ exchange at $38 per share, valuing the company at about $104 billion.

It was the largest technology IPO ever at the time. The hype was enormous — investors and media couldn’t stop talking about it.

But the debut didn’t go smoothly. Technical glitches on NASDAQ delayed the opening. The stock barely moved above the IPO price on the first day and soon fell sharply. Within months, it had dropped to around $18 — roughly half the offering price.

Critics were loud: the company was overvalued, user growth was slowing, mobile monetization was unclear. Many early investors lost money.

What happened next became one of the more remarkable reversals in corporate history. Facebook solved its mobile problem — and how. By 2013, mobile was driving majority of ad revenue. The stock recovered, then kept climbing.

Today Facebook’s parent company Meta has a market cap many times larger than that 2012 valuation. The IPO, so mocked at the time, turned out to be the beginning of an extraordinary run.