In this era, the deeper you are able to see past the b.s that you are bombarded with, the more you will understand. Facebook has been bombarded with negative publicity for almost a year now, if you look past these articles, you will see that Facebook has not taken any sort of hit at all. Go see what the average person is like and you will understand why this is the case (This is also true for Donald Trump winning the election). We tech people live in a bubble.
Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach
81–90 of 228 posts
Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
That analyst seems behind the times at best. I can’t remember when I last heard a person say “I love facebook.” Plenty saying “I hate it” though. Maybe he was alluding to “are addicted to” or “are manipulated into using?” People don’t use Facebook because they love it. They resent it and but use it, mostly. Which makes me think it’s headed for a steep decline.
I think a lot of people do love it. Not the company, of course, but many find the service it provides invaluable. Same goes to WeChat for example, I know quite some people who can't give it enough praise and it is arguably a worse offender than Facebook in all conceivable aspects.
What kind of things do they love about Facebook? I’d be interested to hear.
Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach
#83Pre: - still 30% off highs Numbers: - 4Q EPS $2.38, Est. $2.18 - 4Q Rev. $16.91B, Est. $16.39B - 4Q Mobile Ad Rev. as % Ad Rev. 93% - Mobile represents 93% of ad revenue. Mark doesn't get enough credit for his big switch to mobile, - Cost of revenue up 74 percent year over year - Operating costs went up by 60%, Note this is more than their growth rate, really the only concerning thing from a good quarter - Annual cap…
Always mind boggling to see those margins on that sort of volume. It’s no question FB is one of the greatest money-printing machines ever built. Where does the growth come next though? Do they need to diversify their revenue streams away from advertising? Do they just start paying out dividends or can they really reinvest earnings at a sufficient return to satisfy shareholders?
Facebook's forward growth is going to come from persistently leveraging the userbase with a continued, gradual slowdown in growth. They don't need to diversify their revenue stream, they're growing sales at 30% and are larger than Oracle. Their social monopoly is going to make it very difficult for them to do meaningful acquisitions freely (unless they're well outside social). They couldn't easily buy the next YouTube, WhatsApp or Instagram at this point due to anti-trust concerns.
They did selectively start buying back shares recently as a form of capital return. I'd expect that to continue to the extent the stock remains modestly priced versus the business growth rate.
If all they do is keep on the same path, they easily get from here to $100+ billion in sales by doing nothing special beyond what they're already doing. Plus ~$35 billion in profit to go with it.
A mere 6% average sales growth per year for the next ten years gets them to $100b in sales. More likely, they get there in fiscal 2022 without much trouble.
Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach
#84Pre: - still 30% off highs Numbers: - 4Q EPS $2.38, Est. $2.18 - 4Q Rev. $16.91B, Est. $16.39B - 4Q Mobile Ad Rev. as % Ad Rev. 93% - Mobile represents 93% of ad revenue. Mark doesn't get enough credit for his big switch to mobile, - Cost of revenue up 74 percent year over year - Operating costs went up by 60%, Note this is more than their growth rate, really the only concerning thing from a good quarter - Annual cap…
thanks for this and other breakdowns. what was the primary driver for operating costs rising so much?
building lots of datacenters
Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have every right to be less than impressed with the company and its business model(s), but dont make baseless claims.
I didn’t claim he was lying. I said it was an alternative conclusion. Perhaps to be more generous I should say “exaggerating” or “being selective.” Clearly his interests are aligned with higher stats. Therefore, it makes sense to corroborate those stats with independent data.
Your first sentence was “Or... Zuckerberg is lying.” That is a claim.
Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach
#86I hope this will pierce the HN anti-FB bubble somewhat. It's dangerous to believe one's own BS. FB is here to stay, although I do believe it will wither in the long term (5+ years).
I think you can be anti-FB while still recognizing that it's a powerful force in the industry and the world. Hell, I'd say that many are anti-FB because it's too powerful a force in the industry and the world.
Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach
#87It’s hard not to look at this performance and take away from it that most people really don’t care about privacy. As upsetting as the thought may be to some, Mark’s hypothesis that privacy is no longer a social norm we value seems to be proven more and more right. Despite all the scandals and hearings, their DAU are more than the population of the largest countries on Earth. Short of serious legislation, what slows t…
Who is "we"? You and I? Or "most people", the "average person", some abstract thing that doesn't even exist, determined by numbers? To shorten it extremely: Nobody has the right to piss away the future of humanity. If they do, they simply cease to be relevant to me, by definition. I will gladly fight them, but not ever ask for their permission or advice. Resistance to systematic mass surveillance and what hangs off that is not just a mere "social norm" like whether short or long skirts are acceptable. This is way more complex and important than all of the light-weights that don't consider it combined. Just being alive and wanting to be left alone with whatever apathy one ended up with isn't anything in the intellectual or moral arena.
Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have every right to be less than impressed with the company and its business model(s), but dont make baseless claims.
I didn’t claim he was lying. I said it was an alternative conclusion. Perhaps to be more generous I should say “exaggerating” or “being selective.” Clearly his interests are aligned with higher stats. Therefore, it makes sense to corroborate those stats with independent data.
> "Or... Zuckerberg is lying."
> "I didn’t claim he was lying."
Sure seems like you did...
Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Things tend to smooth out at high volumes.
Well, even if the volume is very high, the scandals had planetary coverage, therefore I would still expect to see some kind of impact? Or would it still be too little to show a variance in the trend? Dumping here links of DAU/MAU charts of other apps (no specific selection - it's all what I was able to find): MAU - WeChat: https://www.statista.com/statistics/255778/number-of-active-... - Twitter: https://www.statista…
> the scandals had planetary coverage, therefore I would still expect to see some kind of impact
You mean you'd expect a meaningful drop. Why? I expected very little consequence. People know Facebook doesn't cost them a monthly fee to use, they realize it's a huge entity that runs advertising to pay the bills. Everyone using the Internet these days is familiar with advertising online. The bulk of the users are precisely the ones that aren't shocked by the privacy scandal. They get to use Facebook and don't have to pay cash for it, they know the deal even if only broadly. Despite the endless attempts by the media to portray all FB users as ignorant.
Target had a huge scandal of stolen customer information. They didn't lose a big part of their sales. Equifax isn't going out of business. Few consumers stopped using Windows over Microsoft's business tactics in the 1990s or after. Walmart used to particularly pay their employees terribly and were pretty vicious cutthroats with suppliers and competitors (still are), outside of a tiny group none of it stopped people from shopping there. Amazon is guilty of a lot of that same behavior over the last two decades.
There's a required threshold for how bad Facebook's behavior would have to be, to turn the average user off of their 'free' service. They haven't got near that level yet. For most people it's a useful social utility that connects them to everyone they know and they don't have to pay money for it. Users will put up with a lot accordingly.
Re: Facebook shares shoot up after strong Q4 earnings despite data breach
#90I hope this will pierce the HN anti-FB bubble somewhat. It's dangerous to believe one's own BS. FB is here to stay, although I do believe it will wither in the long term (5+ years).
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