If companies were valued by hype, then Facebook could certainly claim to be worth $100bn. But is it really worth that in cold, hard cash?

A report from CNBC overnight claims the site is preparing for an initial public offering early next year at an eye-watering valuation of at least $100bn.

A 2012 IPO has been expected for some time. CNBC said the company would be obliged to go public in the first quarter of the year because it is likely to reach the 500-shareholder limit in October, and would then be required to release financial results to the US Securities and Exchange Commission every quarter. The first of these would be due in April, prompting speculation of a first quarter IPO just ahead of that.



Further pressure may be coming from within, with some employees pushing for an IPO so that restrictions on cashing in on their stock will be lifted.

We asked Facebook about the report and they declined to comment. But this follows various remarks from chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg last month when asked about Facebook's IPO. In late May at the Reuters Global Technology Summit, Sandberg described the Facebook IPO as "a process that all companies go through. It's an inevitable process for us, the next thing that happens. No one is buying us, we're going public."

At the POLIS lecture, the Wall Street Journal's Ben Rooney described her answer as non-committal, but she referred to "the IPO" rather than "an IPO", which was seen as further confirmation. And though she joked she'd give out the date, she didn't.

Over the past six months, estimates of Facebook's value have rocketed from $50bn when Goldman Sachs invested $1.5bn in the firm, to $85bn based on trading through private markets such as SecondMarket.

One transaction in January, where a trader bought Facebook shares at $55 each, put the site's value at $124bn – that's 62 times greater than Facebook's estimated revenues of $2bn last year.

If more concrete evidence emerges of a slowdown in Facebook's growth that would confirm the company is peaking, it makes sense for the company to cash in soon. And it's definitely in the air, with LinkedIn's IPO at $4.3bn and Groupon recently filing for its IPO at a valuation of $750m.

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