Investor offer values Facebook at $6.5b

July 14, 2009 11:23:39 AM

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A Russian Internet company is offering to buy 100 million dollars worth of stock from Facebook employees in a deal which values the fast-growing social network at 6.5 billion dollars.

The Russian company, Digital Sky Technologies (DST), which invested 200 million dollars in Facebook in May, is offering 14.77 dollars per share of Facebook common stock.

The tender offer will close "some time in August," said Jennifer Gill, a DST spokeswoman.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the DST offer.


"While individuals must make their own decisions about participating in this program, I'm pleased that the price DST is offering is much greater than the price originally considered last fall," Zuckerberg said in a statement.

"This is recognition of Facebook's growth and progress towards making the world more open and connected," he said.

At the time it purchased a nearly two percent equity stake in Facebook, DST said it would be purchasing at least 100 million dollars of common stock held by current and former Facebook employees.

DST's purchase of a 1.96 percent stake in preferred stock in privately held Facebook, the largest cash-raising exercise by the Palo Alto, California-based company in two years, valued the company at 10 billion dollars.

According to the technology blog BoomTown, current and former employees of Facebook will be allowed to sell up to 20 percent of their common shares.

BoomTown said that if the offer was fully accepted by eligible employees it would give DST a total holding of 3.5 percent of Facebook.

US computer software giant Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake in Facebook for 240 million dollars in 2007, a deal that at the time valued the company at 15 billion dollars.

While its number of users has grown at an amazing clip, Facebook, unlike other Web giants such as Amazon, eBay, Google and Yahoo!, has yet to prove how it is going to translate traffic into cash.

The company has not yet unveiled plans to go public.

Privately held DST, which is based in Moscow and London, holds significant interests in Web companies in Russia and Eastern Europe.