For Sale: Facebook Shares, 67% Off

What is Facebook really worth? We know it’s not worth $15 billion — earlier this week a federal court, ruling on the ConnectU case, confirmed that the company has already placed a different value on its shares than the one they publicly announced as part of last fall’s Microsoft deal.

Now Mike Arrington reports that Bill Dagley, a California money manager, is repping a seller with a block a stock they’re willing to part with at a “value far less than $15 billion.” He then cites a source that says the valuation Dagley’s client is looking for is in the $3 billion to $4 billion range.

Sound plausible? It does to us. We’ve heard a different but similar version of the story from “Stone”, a prolific and anonymous SAI commenter, for a while. The last time that Stone threw this one out — this week — he asserted that the valuation was “less than $4 billion for sure.”

And now, prompted by Arrington’s report, we’ve heard from a different source — this one we know, but have agreed not to identify — who says that in April, he was offered a 0.25% stake for $12.5 million — a $5 billion valuation. Our source, who didn’t move forward with the deal, says they weren’t approached by Bill Dagley but by a Facebook employee, inquiring on behalf of another Facebook employee.

So either said Facebook employee is now working with Dagley, or there are multiple Facebook shareholders looking to unload shares for 2/3rds or less of the $15 billion number the company boasted about last fall. We’d bet on the latter.

Peter Kafka