According to the offer made by Digital Sky Technologies (DST) to increase its stake in the social media platform, Facebook would be valued at $6.5 billion. The Russian telecommunications company wants to invest $100 million to acquire common shares currently held by the platform's employees.
DST's investment would allow Facebook employees to sell up to 20% of their shares in the platform; Facebook's previous attempts to buy back its own shares had failed because there was no chinese overseas africa number data agreement on the value of the company. DST is now offering a price of $14.77 per share, which would value Facebook's common stock at $6.5 billion.
If DST succeeds in its plans, the company would have 3.5% of Facebook. The Russian investment firm has held around 2% since May 2009 , when it invested $200 million in preferred shares, and announced at that time its intention to invest another $100 million in the platform. With that offer, DST valued Facebook at $10 billion, so the current offer represents a drop in the platform's valuation, which has nevertheless been welcomed by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has spoken positively about DST's offer. "Facebook shareholders must decide for themselves whether they want to accept the offer, but I am pleased that the price per share offered by Digital Sky Technologies is higher than in the previous offer in the fall." An estimate of the amount of common shares made by Facebook put the value of the company at $4 billion.
Facebook overtakes MySpace
The platform has overtaken its competitor MySpace in terms of user numbers in the United States in June 2009, when it had 77 million unique visitors, compared to MySpace's 68 million.