Facebook’s bid to buy the photo sharing site was officially approved yesterday. The deal is worth much less than the initial billion dollar price tag, and that’s because part of Facebook’s payment to Instagram was in the form of close to 23 million shares of stock. When the deal was announced the stock was priced at $31 a share. Yesterday’s close (insert sad trombones) $19.10, which works out to around $439 million. Add that to the $300 million in cash, and well, you get a lot of money, but not quite the billion. The Wall Street Journal reports:
The transaction drew a great deal of scrutiny due to its hefty size and the lack of any revenue at Instagram, which had been launched in late 2010. Instagram now has 16 employees.
As of now, Instagram is still in the business of losing money (and making all your pictures look like they were taken with an out of focus Polaroid from 1982).
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