Business

What is ‘Face’ value?

Facebook’s baby-faced boss Mark Zuckerberg may still be a kid by chief executive standards, but his company sure is growing up fast.

The popular social-networking Web site founded by the 25-year-old Zuckerberg may now be worth a very grown-up $20 billion, the same market capitalization as frothy latte maker Starbucks, whose CEO, Howard Schultz, is 57, and well above Facebook’s $3.7 billion valuation that emerged last year from court papers.

The latest valuation is derived from the $2 billion value Digital Sky Technologies boss Yuri Milner pegs his 10 percent stake in Facebook at in an article in Bloomberg’s Businessweek, and comes amid a growth spurt in revenue, which is expected to reach between $1 billion and $2 billion this year, and talk that Zuckerberg is looking to take his company public.

While Facebook’s valuation for the past couple of years has been, at best, a moving target, the $20 billion figure might be closer to reality this time around, said Justin Byers, of VC Experts, a firm that helps value privately held companies.

“Based on the numbers I am seeing, $20 billion wouldn’t be out of the question right now,” Byers said.

According to Byers, Facebook internally increased the value of its employee stock options to $21 a share in recent weeks from $16 earlier this year and less than $9 a share at the end of 2008. Byers bases his calculation on more than 800 million in authorized common stock.

Last May, Milner’s initial $200 million investment in Facebook valued the site at $10 billion. A few years earlier, in 2007, Microsoft’s $240 million investment in the company pegged it at $15 billion.

Last year, however, court papers revealed that Facebook had internally valued the Web site at a mere $3.7 billion, based on a stock valuation of just $8.88 a share.

Facebook spokesman Jonny Thaw said “external attempts to forecast revenue or value the company are fundamentally speculative and should be treated as such. We’re focused on building our business to be successful over the long-term.” kaja.whitehouse@nypost.com