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Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

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Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#261
post #96
post #59

Here are the results that caused this: - Earnings per share: $3.67 vs $3.84 expected - Revenue: $33.67 billion vs $33.4 billion expected Facebook also missed estimates with user numbers. - Daily Active Users (DAUs): 1.93 billion vs 1.95 billion expected - Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 2.91 billion vs 2.95 billion expected - Average Revenue per User (ARPU): $11.57 vs $11.38 expected Future guidance was the biggest miss…

It's not really plausible that the market can predict Facebook's earnings to within 5% and that such a small miss would cause a rational investor to value Facebook 20% lower. This seems more like a symptom of the market being generally skittish, with a small side of "expected" earnings actually being a low-biased estimate, so it's more like a 10% miss.

If Facebook's earnings growth is 5 percentage points per year lower than previously believed, then after less than five years, that's 20% less profit. Markets extrapolate growth rates into the future, not just the next quarter.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I've never understood. These estimates are just that, estimates. They are guesses, potentially educated guesses based on some data, but guesses/hopes/prayers none the less. It's like sports teams and all of the talking heads giving their opinions on the upcoming matches. In sports, it's called betting. But in business, it's called investing. It's the same thing, only one is more widely accepted an legal.

Yea that’s why I don’t understand the big fuss surrounding sports gambling/online poker etc. There’s currently something called the options market, much larger than both those things combined, where people are betting one way or the other on minute differences in a company’s quarterly earnings reports. You want to ban online gambling? Ok fine, I can easily go bet my entire life savings on whether Facebook earnings wi…

But it's not even a difference of billions like 31 to 30. It's these numbers were like the 3rd digit after the decimal different. Sure, in these numbers that's still millions but only single digit millions. It's literally a rounding error depending on least significant digits. In some places, they only had 2 digits. To get to the offsets, they had to increase the accuracy. Literal rounding errors.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#264
post #169

This is from Mark Zuckerberg's post. I think it's a decent explanation of their performance. Historically Facebook always made these longer-term bets and they've typically paid off. "Before I get to that, I want to briefly touch on our Q4 results, which I know Sheryl and Dave are going to go deeper on. I'm proud of the work our teams did here. We shipped products, our community continued to grow, and businesses of al…

So in other words TikTok has made them have to pause and switch to prioritize Reels (which are in every way worse than TikTok BTW) and that means less eyeballs on ads. Honestly Facebook at this point is entirely unusable. My feed is full of shit I don’t want (and I block ads at DNS level so I can’t even imagine what it looks like for most people): Reels, half baked “memes” that are just really random thoughts from pe…

Wow I left it around the time of the Cambridge analytica thing. Sounds like I haven't missed anything...

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google and Microsoft have had the same business model forever . Microsoft has Xbox, Office, Azure, etc. Google has Android, Google Workplace, GCP, etc. When you diversify your income streams you add more. It doesn't mean you get rid of your breadwinner. Facebook's main model seems to becoming illegal and/or not viable via a tech perspective.

Google is not really that diversified, most of the revenue comes from ads. Microsoft is a better example of a diversified business, and IMHO Amazon would be another good example. Edit: sure, it's true that they put ads on everything, from YouTube videos to Gmail mailboxes, but that's not comparable to the level of diversification that MSFT or AMZN have IMHO.

They also run the biggest ad network. If you want to put ads on your site or app, they make it easy.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#266
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's so confusing to me see headlines calling this a "huge earnings miss". Revenue was greater than expected, as was ARPU. I get that the users are under, but this seems pretty far from a huge miss, no?

Feel free to do a deep dive on the meaning and nature of earnings estimates, and you'll find it's mostly just a service that exists because it gives the appearance of legitimacy to various financial institutions. Earnings estimates do not come down from God and there's no one single earnings estimate either, different sites and sources will report different estimates. Typically it's just the average or the median of…

Curious if there are any good, public datasets out there on company earnings guidance or earnings estimates.

Is earnings guidance typically included within quarterly filings, or is it usually given on earnings calls?

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#267
post #169

This is from Mark Zuckerberg's post. I think it's a decent explanation of their performance. Historically Facebook always made these longer-term bets and they've typically paid off. "Before I get to that, I want to briefly touch on our Q4 results, which I know Sheryl and Dave are going to go deeper on. I'm proud of the work our teams did here. We shipped products, our community continued to grow, and businesses of al…

It's unfortunate that Reels (at least what I get in my feed) is complete garbage. Half the time I don't even know what I'm watching, it's just some mix of shock media and sexually suggestive crap. I keep trying to hide it from my feed but Facebook is intent on shoving it down my throat.

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#268
post #239
post #26

Maybe they'll try launching a Facebook phone that tries to capture Apple's market and it'll fail miserably again. Never underestimate the blue message bubble y'all. That's real leverage.

>Never underestimate the blue message bubble y'all. That's real leverage. Only in north America. Like it or not, there is faaarrrrrr more future money to be made with the 3B ish people of china+india than the 0.4B americans.

Don't most rich Chinese use iPhones?

Re: Meta shares drop 20% on Q4 earnings miss, weak outlook

#270
post #229
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't be critical of a company that makes people miserable? That weakens democracy? That enables violence and hate? Just because they make a lot of money we should be cheering? Oh wow, they made $11! Let's forget everything else.

I mean, if you don't have a stock position, why parrot the same tired narrative? It's not adding any insight and it's not like their stock never had downswing before. At one point the crowd here was like oh fb ipo so embarrassing, to oh fb eng so hot much react, to oh fb so evil now, crash and burn pls. Such fickleness. Surely we can do better than that.

Facebook is a machine that makes people parrot tired narratives that are devoid of insight.
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