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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

#521

Post by BbzzbB »

colinmhayes wrote: post #371
oblio wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And Google is 90% ads. OP wanted to use "cool" companies as examples but the actually diversified giants are Microsoft and Amazon.

Saying Google is "just" ads seems a bit disingenuous. Google controls the entire stack for ads, from the all important search, to Google network and YouTube, all the way to operating systems and the browser. That last part is important because Facebook got absolutely fucked by apples privacy changes on iOS. Google has diversified, but more importantly they're not reliant on another company's users.

>but more importantly they're not reliant on another company's users.

Must be why they paid Apple $15B last year to be default search on Safari, a mob fee that increases by the year.

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

#522

Post by BbzzbB »

majani wrote: post #519
voidfunc wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be an interesting but perilous pivot... trying to get into cloud infra at this point seems like an insane idea. What would even be the attraction for company to want to run on FB cloud vs one of the established players that now have a decade plus of real world operations experience from running 3rd party customer workloads? If we are spitballing ideas, If I am Zuck I'm looking at figuring out how to buy Va…

In a world where Activision is worth $70b, Valve would be worth similar. And you would have to leave them alone post acquisition because of their eccentric organizational style. And hope that Gaben maintains and Mike stay centered despite receiving $35b in the bank overnight. Anyway Facebook's cash position is $60b, they can't afford it

>they can't afford it

Ever heard about non-all cash deals?

Besides, that $60-some B is after nearly $20B in buybacks from Q4 so they could've without it. But as they did, some two months of saved up FCF and they can again.

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

#523

Post by BbzzbB »

cobookman wrote: post #61
codingkev wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is dying slowly in the developed world, that is true. However it is still growing in emerging markets. And most importantly: FB is still generating tons of cash to fund the other assets. WhatsApp has basically zero monetization right now but billions of users. Huge potential cash cow. Instagram still has a ton of potential for further optimized monetization. Think fully embedded 1-click buying for things lik…

The emerging markets *currently* do not have as large of revenue potential for advertising as the western markets. Meta made in Q4-2020 53.56B in ad rev in the US and Canada. Meta only made 4.05B in Asia Pacific in Q4-2020. https://www.statista.com/statistics/251328/facebooks-average...

Emerging markets still shown slightly north of 30% YoY ARPU growth. Combine this with a larger user base (7x NA's, 5x EU's) and it remains an important lever, one to potentially outgrow NA's + EU's share of revenue. They in fact, lumped together, earn more than EU, and is not even one doubling of ARPU (proportionally) away of outgrowing NA. If the trends remain in like 5 years AP + RoW will be their core business.

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

#524

Post by zepto »

aierou wrote: post #518
zepto wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook hired an investigator that concluded that their involvement was without their knowledge It seems like you simply take Facebook at their word. > More realistically, I think the U.S. (where most of the claims are relevant) is simply declining after several hundred years of abusive reign as the world's superpower. You do realize that you have provided no actual explanation for the decline. Can you explain how…

Just as with Facebook it seems I am guilty until proven innocent. If you want to believe that they intentionally enabled genocide in a foreign country with politics that neither of us could likely begin to understand, then fine. I have been more than clear, and yet you ask for more. How can I offer explanation to the decline of a regime? Is it not obvious that mental health has been in decline for decades? Or that ec…

> How can I offer explanation to the decline of a regime? Is it not obvious that mental health has been in decline for decades? Or that economic inequality is ever-growing? The average lifespan is in decline. Houselessness is on the rise.

Yes, and Facebook is contributing to the acceleration of those things.

Is that not something you have considered?

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

#525

Post by zepto »

rdtwo wrote: post #511
zepto wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both companies have to keep evolving to stay relevant, yes. One is declining and reviled, and the other is growing and seen as fun. That’s the only difference.

But one sits on a mountain of cash and the other on just a hill

I guess you are not aware that TikTok is both highly profitable and valuable.

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

#526

Post by dang »

ohashi wrote: post #58
nappy-doo wrote: post #42

The vitriol on HN for FB is something else. The earnings for this company are truly staggering. They made 11$/user. Their earnings were up 34% year-over-year – on a base of 29B dollars. They made 10B more this year than they did last year, and the comments in here are all about, "boy Apple fucked them, and Meta suxor!" You people are nuts. While I don't love FB as an entity, as a business they are making fucking bank…

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.

Please don't take HN threads further into tedious flamewars. Those have nothing to do with intellectual curiosity, and are therefore off topic here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#527

Post by bhelkey »

It is very common for stocks to significantly rise or fall after the release of earnings reports. If stocks always went up after their earnings report, it would make sense to buy the stock beforehand and sell immediately afterwards. Conversely, if the stock always went down after earnings, it would make sense to sell the stock right before the report was released and rebuy afterwards.

I noticed that often times these dips lead to sensationalist headlines like "Apple shares tank 5% after abysmal earnings". When I looked into these headlines, I often noticed that the stock often "plummeted" to the price it was at a week or two prior.

To counter this, one metric I use is, "When was the last time the stock was at this new price?"

Today Facebook shares are trading at ~$238. The last time it was trading at this price was June 2020.

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

#528

Post by aierou »

zepto wrote: post #524
aierou wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as with Facebook it seems I am guilty until proven innocent. If you want to believe that they intentionally enabled genocide in a foreign country with politics that neither of us could likely begin to understand, then fine. I have been more than clear, and yet you ask for more. How can I offer explanation to the decline of a regime? Is it not obvious that mental health has been in decline for decades? Or that ec…

> How can I offer explanation to the decline of a regime? Is it not obvious that mental health has been in decline for decades? Or that economic inequality is ever-growing? The average lifespan is in decline. Houselessness is on the rise. Yes, and Facebook is contributing to the acceleration of those things. Is that not something you have considered?

No. These problems would certainly exist even if Facebook never did. Like I said, Facebook could be dismantled by regulators today. It won't do anything.

Do you think Facebook or other social media are the main contributors to the acceleration of those things? Why?

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

#529

Post by gw67 »

IgorPartola wrote: post #234
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…

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…

What do you use to block ads at DNS-level?

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

#530

Post by cwkoss »

engineeringwoke wrote: post #346
cwkoss wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe I'm a generation younger than you, but if you were young when Snapchat was cool, then you probably transitioned to stories from the "main" IG content and dropped Facebook altogether. I spend 90+% of my time on IG on stories and it is a really good way to keep up with people as far as generally knowing where they are/what they're up to. I probably post once a month for reference.

Ah, this is about instagram stories! Yes, definitely know peers who use that. I was thinking Zuck was referencing facebook stories, which seem like a flop.
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