By msnbc.com news services
Internet IPO fever has descended on Wall Street over the past several months, with social media companies Groupon, Zynga and LinkedIn all making their stock market debuts with mixed results.
Consumer reviews website Yelp surged on its stock market debut last Friday, at one point leaping as much as 70 percent, and Zynga, a developer of online games, is up 46 percent since it went public on Dec. 16, 2011.
But shares of LinkedIn, an online professional network, have slipped 8 percent since its first day of trading on May 19. And shares of online deals company Groupon’s are down 26 percent since the company’s first day of trading on Nov. 4.
Is the hype overdone? And will Facebook’s anticipated $100 billion initial public offering expected public offering later this year meet with as much enthusiasm?
Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter visited CNBC Monday to discuss the outlook for the sector:
“I think the hype is actually pretty real,” he said.
“I think people are really interested in the power of social media and they are seeing there’s a lot of value to be unlocked with business models like Yelp; Facebook obviously has a lot more users and they monetize them. So yeah people are very interested in Facebook right now,” he added.
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