Possibly to counter the public statements by famed investors Warren Buffett, Charlie Munger (also of Berkshire Hathaway tickers: BRK.A, BRK.B), and Jim Rogers (the “adventure capitalist!”) — who say they’re not interested in buying the Facebook IPO, Woz speaks out about his bullishness for social media’s long-awaited Facebook IPO. Steve Wozniak, this tech icon, inventor, computer programmer, and Apple co-founder has said that he would buy Facebook at nearly any price or any valuation. He told Bloomberg television in Australia that he would buy FB stock and “[doesn’t] care what the opening price is.”
If you’re keeping score at home, Wozniak’s net worth is estimated to be about $100M USD as of 2011, and not sure whether that number includes the ‘benefits’ of Fusion-Io, Inc (ticker symbol: FIO), a flash-based memory/storage company that IPO-ed last summer — and where Wozniak serves as Chief Scientist. (They count Facebook as a major source of their revenue.)
So hyperbole aside, Facebook at any price? Really, Woz? Ok then… I’ll find someone online who bought them on the secondary market last year to sell me 100 shares at up to $100 dollars each, and I’ll sell them to you for a cool million a piece? Do we have a $100M deal? I promise I’ll even use the proceeds to buy some FIO stock – which has already been rumored to be a take-over candidate. (Some sources online are reporting that Fusion-io, Inc already turned down a $33/share acquisition offer from Dell (ticker symbol: DELL). Neither side will confirm this.)
Seriously, this PR buzz is interesting for Woz and for FIO — not sure if it gets the frenzied-chum-in-the-water-for-sharks for Friday’s IPO considering that there are recent conflicting reports about oversubscribed interest in Facebook’s IPO, and a general lack of interest in the stock at this valuation. (Remember everybody on and off Wall Street just “talks their book” when it comes to stocks! Translation: investors and traders say whatever they want that supports their investment thesis, and helps their current holdings [long or short].)
Either way, Wozniak should get a Chief Marketing Officer paycheck (from Facebook and Fusion-io) for last week’s stock-market-soundbyte-of-the-week. Honestly since the FIO IPO, Google Finance shows the stock at down 8.06% YTD for 2012, and actually down -1.11% for all time (since June 2011). What does that mean? The stock has come full circle to the IPO price -with a small discount – and now is starting to look interesting – at least to this investor.
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