Facebook plans even bigger floatation

Facebook increases the number of shares on offer by a quarter.Facebook says it will sell 25% more shares than first planned in its flotation in response to strong demand.

The move comes one day after the social networking giant said it would raise the price of the shares by 21% to between $34 and $38 a share (£ 21.25 and £23.75).

It also comes despite increasing doubts about the site’s profitability- which is largely used for social updates.

Car company General Motors added to those doubts by saying that it would no longer pay to advertise on the site.

Which comes only a few days after Facebook itself warned that it is not geared up for mobile and smartphone advertising.

Facebook will add about 84 million shares to its initial public share offering (IPO) and will now sell about 421 million shares, up from 337 million, raising $18 billion (£11.3 billion) and implies Facebook’s full market value is well above $100 billion (£62.5 billion).

If all the shares are sold at the new higher price, the IPO would be the third largest initial share sale in US history, after the financial giant Visa and ironically General Motors.

The eight year old social network has 900 million users worldwide although it made a profit of just $1billion (£625 million) last year.

If you think that the growth story is worth the punt then go for it- with your fingers crossed. But wiser minds- including the Financial Times suggest that waiting five years may be a more opportune time to invest.

By that time the pe may have come back to a more sane level from it’stratospherical level of over 100.