Facebook valued at up to $95 bln

NEW YORK - The Associated Press

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg smiles during a meeting in San Francisco. AP photo

Facebook, the company that turned the social Web into a cultural and business phenomenon, is worth as much as $95 billion, according to the price range for its upcoming initial public offering of stock.

Facebook’s IPO, expected in a couple of weeks, would be the biggest ever for an Internet company. Facebook disclosed the price range of $28 to $35 per share in a regulatory filing Thursday.

At the high end, Facebook and its current shareholders could raise as much as $13.58 billion — far more than the $1.9 billion raised in the 2004 offering for current Internet IPO record-holder Google Inc. The IPO valued the company at $23 billion. Google is now worth about $200 billion.

Facebook’s IPO has been highly anticipated, not just because of how much money it will raise but because Facebook itself is so popular. The world’s largest online social network has more than 900 million users.

Facebook’s offering values the company at $76 billion to $95 billion, based on the expected number of Facebook shares following the IPO. That’s about 2.74 billion, according to Renaissance Capital, an IPO investment adviser.