This week marks the end of the Facebook, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) analyst quiet period for those many brokerage firms which have analysts who will finally be free to initiate coverage for their client base.  How the mix of calls will come is still up for grabs, but the reality is that if they liked (NOT LIKE) it at $38.00 for the initial public offering price that jammed to new buyers, then they should really LIKE it at $32.50 today.

The company’s $100+ billion market value after the IPO was a bit much, but if these brokers come out with Buy, Outperform, and even Market Perform ratings they can still justify that $38.00 price target. Will that happen? We will know in the next 48 hours.  It is important to remember that analysts at the underwriting firms generally rate stocks at or above the initial offering price.  It is considered to be a slap in the face when a price target is under the official IPO price regardless of the underlying formal rating.

Perhaps the single most important call will be that from Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) as it was the head cheese of a really bad IPO. We wanted to give a synopsis of the non-syndicate brokerage and research shops covering it, followed by the syndicate brokers. Other important calls will come from Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS), J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM), Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) and more than 25 others.

Calls already in existence with price targets if seen, but we did not include the pre-IPO valuation calls:

• Argus – Hold – $38
• Nomura – Buy
• S&P Capital IQ – Neutral
• Ironfire Capital – Dead in 5 years
• Evercore – Equalweight – $39
• JMP Securities – Market Outperform – $39
• Bernstein – Underperform – $25
• Baird – Outperform – $37
• Needham – Buy – $40

Here are all of the firms which were in the syndicate which will be able to initiate coverage, and there are more than 30 of them:

• Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC
• J.P. Morgan Securities LLC
• Goldman, Sachs & Co.
• BofA/ML (Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith)
• Barclays Capital Inc.
• Allen & Company LLC
• Citigroup Global Markets Inc.
• Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC
• Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.
• RBC Capital Markets, LLC
• Wells Fargo Securities, LLC
• Blaylock Robert Van LLC
• BMO Capital Markets Corp.
• C.L. King & Associates, Inc.
• Cabrera Capital Markets, LLC
• CastleOak Securities, L.P.
• Cowen and Company, LLC.
• E*TRADE Securities LLC
• Itaú BBA USA Securities, Inc.
• Lazard Capital Markets LLC
• Lebenthal & Co., LLC
• Loop Capital Markets LLC
• M.R. Beal & Company
• Macquarie Capital (USA) Inc.
• Muriel Siebert & Co., Inc.
• Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.
• Pacific Crest Securities LLC
• Piper Jaffray & Co.
• Raymond James & Associates, Inc.
• Samuel A. Ramirez & Company, Inc.
• Stifel, Nicolaus & Company, Incorporated
• The Williams Capital Group, L.P.
• William Blair & Company, L.L.C.

Get ready.  There are soon to be a flood of Facebook research calls. By the way, both PUT and CALL options trading is active ahead of the Facebook quiet period expiration.

JON C. OGG

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