Meta Platforms (ex Facebook) Stock , META

The first version of Facebook launched in February 2004 as a Harvard-only social network. Two months later, Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, and Eduardo Severin form the first LLC that would become today’s Facebook.

Facebook was growing like crazy, and by December of that year reached one million users. But it would still be another eight years before Facebook’s high-profile acquisition of Instagram and its initial public offering (IPO).

The Social Network, a 2010 movie by David Finches, would help cement Facebook’s place in modern culture. By that time, Facebook was already valued over $11 billion, with investments from Microsoft, Peter Thief, and Goldman Sachs — yet it still wasn’t public.

Finally, after years of resistance, Facebook passed the 500 shareholder threshold, forcing it to go public. On February 1, 2012, Facebook officially filed its S1 documents with the SEC. That prospectus said the network had 845 million monthly active users. Facebook stock was to become a reality.

During the company’s roadshow hawking its soon-to-be-public stock and potential Facebook stock price to would-be investors, Facebook’s valuation kept climbing. Two days before the IPO, Facebook said it would add 25% more shares to the IPO. Everyone was guessing how high Facebook stock would go.

Facebook shares hit the Nasdaq exchange on May 18, 2012, but the day was marred by a number of technical glitches. Facebook stock price shot up as high as $45 before tumbling to close at $38.23, only 23 cents above the original asking stock price and $3.82 below its opening stock price, giving it a market cap of $90 billion.

By the end of the first week of trading, Facebook’s stock price had dropped to $26.81.

Facebook’s stock price wouldn’t turn green again until December 2013, over a year after it first hit public markets, hitting $55.12 per share with a $140 billion market cap.

Facebook’s stock price would get another big boost in February 2014, when the company announced it would purchase WhatsApp. Shares of Facebook closed at $68.06.

Quarter after quarter, Facebook’s stock price continued to climb with few massive jumps in either direction, negative or positive. Though Facebook stock did suffer a slight stock price loss in late 2016 when news broke that Facebook may have misled companies with incorrect advertising metrics.

In late 2017, Facebook stock price was trading on the verge of $170 per share, giving the company a market value of almost $500 billion.

As for Mark Zuckerberg, he finally got that Harvard degree when he went back to speak at the school’s 2017 commencement.