Today at noon Pacific Time, Facebook traded for the last time on private markets and closed at its highest price yet, $44.10 per share, giving the company an implied valuation of to $103.635 billion to $110.25 billion.

The former assumes 2.35 billion shares remain outstanding and the latter number is based on 2.5 billion shares outstanding. Since the end of last year, we’ve seen both numbers used for the share count.

The previous high closing price for Facebook shares, $44 apiece, occurred February 9.

The company hasn’t said when the shares might begin trading publicly, nor when an opening price might be set, but earlier this week, SharesPost moved the closing date for this auction back three days and told participants this would be the last auction. The private marketplace said that preparations for going public are the reason for the end in trading.

In a related development, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission expedited approval of a filing by attorneys for Facebook’s Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg disclosing his exercise of stock options before the company’s initial public offer.

Facebook hasn’t announced a date for its market opening, nor set a price range for the debut, but many speculate the trading might begin in May. And today’s closing price on SharesPost could inform how much the shares start at when the public offer begins.

With so much of SharesPost’s business over the past year or two consisting of Facebook trades, we’re wondering what the private marketplace will do for transaction fees; the site does suggest that deals may come through involving Bloom Energy, Redfin, Chegg, Kno, Truecar, Solarcity, Recyclebank, Etsy, Linden Lab, eHarmony, Eventbrite, Gilt Groupe, Kaya, Esolar, RightScale, Powermat, Twitter and XDC, but none of them have the level of interest that Facebook does.

That said, here’s a copy of the email SharesPost sent out a couple of hours after the auction closed.

We are writing SharesPost members like you who indicated they would like to occasionally receive news from SharesPost.
SharesPost Financial Corporation completed its auction on March 30, 2012 of 150,000 units of an investment vehicle designated to hold shares of Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”). A clearing price of $44.10 per share was established at this auction.
Barring something entirely unexpected, this will be our final auction of the shares of Facebook. We would like to thank the more than 1,100 institutions and individuals who participated in our Facebook auctions, resulting in total share and unit sales of more than $425,000,000 (valued at today’s closing price), making SharesPost the most active auction platform for Facebook shares. We look forward to serving your interests in the many other companies in which SharesPost currently facilitates transactions and in the emerging private capital markets.
Members submitting qualifying bids at or above the clearing price in this auction will be contacted shortly with instructions on next steps for completing this transaction. Successful auction bidders will hold an indirect interest in the shares of Facebook, Inc. through their ownership of units of an investment vehicle designated to hold the shares. The administrator of the investment vehicle, SP Investments Management, LLC, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of SharesPost, Inc.
SharesPost members who wish to be informed of and be eligible to participate in future auctions of private company securities must first be qualified by our affiliated broker-dealer as an accredited investor under the U.S. securities laws by SharesPost Financial Corporation, Member FINRA and SIPC. To get qualified, please click on the green button below.

AllFacebook edited an image from Shutterstock.