Facebook Valued At $102.8B After Final Secondary Market Auction

After its final stock trading on the secondary market, Facebook Inc was valued at $102.8 billion.

The trading on SharesPost, a secondary market that facilitates selling and buying of shares of privately held companies such as Facebook, was completed Friday afternoon. This was the last time the shares were sold prior to the initial public offering (IPO) of the company, which is expected to take place in May.

“SharesPost Financial Corporation completed its auction on March 30, 2012 of 150,000 units of an investment vehicle designated to hold shares of Facebook,” SharesPost said in a statement. The units were auctioned at a price of $44.10.

“We would like to thank the more than 1,100 institutions and individuals who participated in our Facebook auctions, resulting in total share and unit sales of more than $425,000,000,” it added.

Facebook, which has more than 845 million users, is the most popular social networking service.

The company, which has filed the prospectus for its IPO seeking to raise $5 billion in initial funding, is yet to set its price range for the IPO.

According to the filing, Facebook first turned a profit in 2009 when it earned $229 million on $777 million in sales. At the end of 2011, the company had $3.9 billion in cash and marketable securities, up from $1.8 billion at the end of 2010.