Facebookhovered near the initial public offering price in its trading debut, following a record IPO that made the social network more costly than almost every company in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index.

The shares rose 23 cents above the IPO price of $38 as of 4 p.m. in New York. Facebook sold 421.2 million shares to raise $16 billion yesterday, giving the company a $104.2 billion market value. Underwriters bought Facebook's stock to keep it from falling below the IPO price, people with knowledge of the matter said today.

The offering valued the company at 107 times trailing 12-month earnings, more than every S&P 500 member except Amazon.com and Equity Residential. The performance disappointed some investors who expected a first-day pop.

"They squeezed the lemon dry here," said Dan Veru, chief investment officer at Palisade Capital Management, who didn't participate in the IPO.