Another Perspective On Facebook's non-IPO

I recently wrote this post in light of the publicity surrounding Facebook's recent private equity offering, ending with this passage,


"Facebook continues to confound. Is global social networking truly a value-added proposition and business model on a par with Google's search and related ad businesses? Is online gaming via social networking really so novel and profitable?

Or is Zuckerberg merely enjoying the latest, most profitable round of social networking hype?
One thing may be a positive, however. That is, Facebook, Twitter and Groupon, at present, are not public. So any frothiness that subsequently deflates, with concomitant value destruction, will be absorbed by wealthy, so-called 'sophisticated' investors, rather than the general public."
 
Then there's another side, presented in a Wall Street Journal editorial in Monday's edition. Gordon Crovitz asks if the real issue is that wealthy private investors who are clients of Goldman Sachs are getting the benefit of early price appreciation in Facebook, while the average investor has to wait for an IPO that will enrich those early private investors?

What Crovitz contends is that my last sentence needn't even be true, and, at least each investor should determine the suitability of a Facebook-like equity for her/himself.

On further reflection, I agree with him. Mostly because the current system results in the wealthy having access to so many issues which the average retail investor never sees. An example comes to mind: then-vibrant Microsoft.

And I suppose one can contend that retail investors don't need hot IPOs to lose money. They can do that in individual brokerage accounts already. But as Crovitz notes, issues like Facebook, regardless of their long term viability, tend to have short term gains which now belong exclusively to sophisticated, already-wealthy investors.

So I guess I don't mind that retail investors would be exposed to risks from investing in a less-mature Facebook's IPO. Because at least that company would have audited financial statements allowing investors to easily assess, for themselves, the wisdom of buying and/or holding the shares. But on the positive side, average investors would have the opportunity to participate in some of the genuinely value-adding investing successes much earlier, thus sharing much more of the early gains.

To be clear, I'm not advocating investing in Facebook, Groupon or Twitter. Certainly not Twitter. But I am in favor of the SEC putting these into public markets earlier, allowing for public availability of their financials in real time at a much earlier phase of their corporate life.