Image: Robert Scoble
Under the microscope.
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Facebook execs are getting used to the prospect of being a public company by scripting fake earnings calls where they have to answer hard questions from analysts.
That’s according to the Wall Street Journal, which talked to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and several other execs about Facebook’s goals.
The report says that Facebook will file early next year and go public some time in the second quarter. The company has written a top-secret IPO prospectus — something that a company’s bankers usually take care of. It is apparently not planning to run an auction-type IPO like Google did back in 2004.
The company’s CFO, David Ebersman, is also auditing quarterly financial statements and taking care to avoid any dubious accounting that might call negative attention like happened with Zynga and Groupon’s IPOs this year.
Zuckerberg told the Journal he wants Facebook to become a blue-chip company that’s mentioned in the same breath as Microsoft and Procter and Gamble. So he’s thinking squarely about the long-term — just as Microsoft once wanted to put a computer on every desk, which it basically succeeded in doing, Zuckerberg wants to come up with some sort of big, long-term vision for Facebook.
Article source: SAI http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/KkhmA7U-Fpc/facebook-is-scripting-pretend-earnings-calls-as-it-prepares-to-go-public-2011-12