Facebook sinks on 1st day without underwriter support

Its shares fell $4.6 to $33.6, which represents a decline of more than 12% from Friday's close

Facebook stock sank on Monday in the first day of trading without the full support of the company's underwriters, leaving some investors down nearly 25% from where they were Friday afternoon.

Facebook's debut was beset by problems, so much so that Nasdaq said on Monday it was changing its IPO procedures. That may comfort companies considering a listing but does little for Facebook, whose lead underwriter Morgan Stanley had to step in and defend the $38 offering price on the open market.

Without that same level of defense, its shares fell $4.64 to $33.67 in the first minutes of trading. That represented a decline of more than 12% from Friday's close and about 24.4% from the intra-day high of $45 a share.

Volume was again massive with more than 52 million shares trading hands in 15 minutes. Nearly 581 million shares were traded on Friday in the five or so hours that the stock was open.

As the stock fell, there was a long list of questions -- ranging from whether the underwriters priced the shares too high to how well prepared the Nasdaq was to handle the biggest Internet IPO ever -- and few immediate answers.

"It was just a poorly done deal and it just so happens to be the biggest deal ever for Nasdaq and they pooched it, that's the bottom line here," said Joe Saluzzi, co-manager of trading at Themis Trading in Chatham, New Jersey.

Nasdaq changes

Nasdaq said Monday morning the changes it was making would prevent a repeat of what happened Friday, when glitches prevented some traders from knowing for hours whether their trades had been completed.

The exchange also said it would implement procedures to accommodate orders that were not properly executed last week.

A source said Morgan Stanley's brokerage arm still had a "large number" of share orders from Friday that were not confirmed, which it was working to resolve.

A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment on the share price issue.

But analysts said that after the initial frenzy, investors were quickly becoming cautious about the stock.

"Investors are increasingly aware of the risk embedded in the stock price. There are real concerns about growth and advertisers' frequent lack of certainty how best to use Facebook, along with rising costs and ongoing acquisition risk," said Brian Wieser at Pivotal Research Group, who has a $30 target on the stock.

"At $38, the stock is priced for perfection in a manner that implied that risks were negligible."