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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

#381

Post by rkk3 »

pier25 wrote: post #273
omot wrote: 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…

I wonder why they didn't buy TikTok when it was starting to become popular like they did with Instagram or Whatsapp. Maybe they thought it was going to fail like Vine and other short video platforms.

> I wonder why they didn't buy TikTok when it was starting to become popular like they did with Instagram or Whatsapp.

ByteDance was a large company before TikTok and had other successful products. TikTok actually developed out of a billion dollar acquisition Bytedance made[1]. It wasn't for sale. Sort of like how Tinder wasn't for sale because it was owned by IAC (Match, OkCupid).

Also regulatory environment in the US and in China would make it unfeasible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ByteDance

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

#382

Post by [deleted] »

cwkoss wrote: post #341
omot wrote: 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…

Stories "paid off"? Are there ads in them? Are they popular with other people? Very minimally utilized in my social circle, I see maybe 1 suggested story per month, maybe click through 2-4 a year, watch 10 seconds of bland content by someone I haven't talked to in years, then close the tab wondering why I thought the it was going to be interesting this time.

[deleted]

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

#383

Post by paxys »

JCM9 wrote: post #93

Facebook’s core business model appears to be in decline. They don’t have a very diversified revenue stream despite trying various side businesses. This is the market worried that Facebook’s best days are behind it. Facebook is betting the farm on the metaverse stuff but without meaningful financial results that’s not going to placate market concerns over what looks like a downhill future for the core businesses. Face…

Disagree about them "betting the farm" on metaverse. They may be throwing some advertising dollars behind it, but it is clear that the bulk of their efforts are still focused on their core apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) and the competition with TikTok. I doubt the product and engineering teams are as invested in metaverse as Zuck wants the world to believe.

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

#384

Post by skinnymuch »

WalterBright wrote: post #344
skinnymuch wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not helpful to say it’s inevitable if no timeline is given. If it won’t happen for 30 years, there is little point in talking about it right now. Though looking at history, when one of these tech giants do fall, a lot of people who were saying it would happen will act like prophets. Especially funny because the downfall of Facebook has been predicted for a decade now. Since Friendster and MySpace each did not la…

Who has been proven wrong are all the pundits who proclaimed their monopolies were unstoppable. Other giant companies have fallen as well. RCA, Xerox, GE, Kodak, on and on. The reasons are well known. They become bureaucratic, wasteful and ossified, and become unable to adapt to a changing marketplace. I've seen this play out again and again and again in my lifetime.

Which sort of pundits? You said "pundits...their monopolies". Are you referring to people with a vested interest in the companies/monopolies? If so, that makes sense. They have no reason not to say that, whether they believe it or not.

Yes you're right. However on HN and similar tech/geek areas, the common theme regarding FB for a decade now has been direct or indirect implying of its coming demise. Which was what I was saying in my comment. Those people are not correct. It is being said in this thread and other recent threads too. If FB is still a $5-600B+ company in 2025, then these recent comments are also not correct.

Which is to say, it's hard to imagine FB dropping lower than the ~11th biggest US company and ~15th biggest worldwide[0] company at a $600B market cap in 2025. A valuation they did not cross until May 2020.

[0] Right now they are 8th in the US and world. Top 5 for earnings. Usually 5th-6th.

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

#385

Post by skizm »

mathattack wrote: post #174
dmurray wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It’s not about accuracy. If a stock is priced at a huge multiple to earnings and sales, the market consensus is enormous profit growth for a sustained period. When the slope of the curve moves (or changes direction) the NPV (Net Present Value) of future cash flows drops dramatically. The miss is also against future guidance. This could be answering a question of “Is Facebook too distracted to grow their core business…

> If a stock is priced at a huge multiple to earnings and sales...

FBs P/E ratio was well into the value stock territory of ~22 before this dip. They were trading at the lowest multiple of any other big tech company by far, now they're even more insanely undervalued from a fundamentals perspective. I realize that doesn't matter in the age of the meme stock, but personally I'm still pretty bullish in the long term and that's assuming the XR stuff is just a giant money furnace and returns nothing.

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

#386

Post by paulryanrogers »

acdha wrote: post #360
paulryanrogers wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Balckberry, Treo, AIM, XMPP, and Windows Mobile blazed the trails. Apple's role in ramping up data usage likely helped, though I suspect much of that change would have happened eventually regardless.

> Balckberry, Treo, AIM, XMPP, and Windows Mobile 2 of those aren't phones, did you mean something else? On the other three, that's kind of like saying that the IBM Selectric blazed the trail for the PC — not wrong, but minimizing how much room there was still to go. If you used a Blackberry, it was good at message, tolerable for email, and bad at everything else. The Treos had some nice ideas but were agonizing slow…

I mentioned AIM and XMPP because they put pressure on SMS pricing, and increased demand for mobile data.

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

#387

Post by ohashi »

aierou wrote: post #217
ohashi wrote: 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.

What, does public opinion shield you from the burden of proof? These are outrageous claims. I pray for legislation to put this all to rest.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/sep/14/facebook-...

https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/white-supre...

https://www.reuters.com/article/usa-election-facebook-russia...

So outrageous it's easy to find evidence for all of them?

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

#388

Post by aylmao »

vhiremath4 wrote: post #322
civilized wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the sake of argument let's take you folks' word that it's the future of gaming (for the subset that can tolerate and enjoy the headsets). How much money is in that? I don't believe for a moment that it'll extend into work interactions. Maybe family visiting type experiences, again for the subset that can enjoy the headset setup.

I want to disclose a bias I have here: I run a video startup, so I'm pretty incentivized to believe VR will become a standard in several work contexts. That said, when I try my hardest to think objectively about the future of work, I think VR is going to be everywhere. Workers going into factories will become exceedingly rare. The cost of humans is high both from a safety and headcount perspective, and more and more…

I think I agree, though from a more skeptical standpoint. To be fair I haven't used VR much lately, but at first glance I see a lot of parallels between this and the iPad.

The iPad is a fantastic device, and it definitely changed the way many people use computers. People use them for all sorts of things, because they feature properties that make them more comfortable for plenty of work applications.

I'd argue however they haven't had the significant, "post-PC" impact people used to believe they'd have. I remember the narrative back then was predicting they would change the way most people interacted with computers, and PCs would stick around "like trucks" just for the "heavy" or specific jobs for which they'd the absolutely required.

What I've seen instead is that iPads (and all tablets really) act mostly as a utility or compliment, and when I had one I only casually used it for light tasks when my computer was out of reach or battery.

So in my case, I don't doubt a lot of places will have VR headsets for work, but I still don't think people will consider them indispensable except for very specific applications. I think we'll keep seeing more remote service repairs, for example, but not that workers going into factories will become exceedingly rare— only less extraordinary. I think it's probable VR will become as common for 3D artists as tablets are for 2D artists, but don't necessarily think it'll spill out into software architecture or other keyboard-centric applications like that.

In summary, I think VR will become more commonplace and be a fantastic tool in many contexts, but I don't think at the moment that it will signify a significant paradigm shift in most work contexts.

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

#390

Post by sedatk »

nikolay wrote: post #295
sedatk wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VR experience is otherworldly. But, Facebook's idea of making a clone of Second Life VR isn't futuristic or exciting at all.

So, you think Second Life died, because of the lack of VR headsets?!

No, I don't think that. I didn't even mention that.
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