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Facebook to File for IPO Next Week

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Re: Facebook to File for IPO Next Week

#91

Well, honestly I think that buying Facebook shares right now is a high risk move. While it is possible maybe to forecast some ups and downs in the immediate following days, if the evaluation actually goes to 100 billions it'd look scary to me. I'm not saying that Facebook is dying or that it's gonna die anytime soon, but I am not able to foresee any significant growth. The article compared, with sort of negative term…

My (sure to be wrong) Facebook predictions: * The Facebook Phone * The Facebook Netbook * Major user datamining product sales to global governments * Acquiring binge (gaming, education (I think they will go for Khan Academy) * video hosting * Their own voip platform Facebook still has a lot of room to innovate, not that they would necessarily be successful in each iteration. But I would say that the number one thing…

I really really really hope Khan Academy doesn't sell to anyone, especially to FB

Re: Facebook to File for IPO Next Week

#92
post #78
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you were saying was wrong, and more importantly invalid. Gold rising in price does not equate to the USD being less valuable, because there are more than 2 things in the world. Bring the Euro and the Yuan into it if you're going to make currency-valuation based arguments. But even more than that, compare it to stock market indices. We're talking about how the market valued it, not about currency valuations. The…

> if nobody understands the brilliance of your argument What they didn't understand (what I said they didn't understand) was that I tried to determine value of the USD, not compare price of the gold to price to the shares. Almost everyone pulled out some stupid comparison, trying to be funny. The Ron Paul, Apple and Juice comments looked like they came here from reddit. Only few comments were actually valuable and tr…

Upvoted for admitting you were wrong about the gold comparison, it's hard to do that on the internet and we could all do it more often.

Re: Facebook to File for IPO Next Week

#93
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lockup is 180 days

for vested shares. I am assuming most will not have all their shares vested yet.

Really?

4 year to vest for most companies here so if you were hired in winter of 2008 into spring of 09 all of those shares will be vested by time the lock up expires.

That is assuming they file next week go through the 3-4 month quiet period and revisions to their S-1 and then IPO late spring, maybe June and then the lock up expires in December 2012.

Re: Facebook to File for IPO Next Week

#94
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to add to your list of Facebook products. * Facebook Search Engine.

I don't get why people seem to ignore this. If facebook added internet search to their site they would instantly become the second biggest provider. I would be very surprised if they weren't already working on this.

Facebook does provide Bing searches integrated into the platform.

Re: Facebook to File for IPO Next Week

#95
There hardly seems to be much upside left. Most of the potential for appreciation has already been milked by late stage VCs (DST), Goldman's preferred clients, and investors on SharesPost and Second Market. This probably won't be a Google or Amazon. But then, 5 years down the line, who knows.

Re: Facebook to File for IPO Next Week

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GRPN: 9.5X sales ZNGA: 6.5X sales LNKD: 16.2X sales P: 8.7X sales S&P 500: 1.3X sales. It appears that valuations are very high right now. The stocks are down from their peaks—-in other words, investors are not at a record level of optimism about these companies. But a fair assessment is that they've gone from "Wildly optimistic" to "Optimistic."

What's interesting is that even the most aggressive ratio among these companies, the 16.2X, would value Facebook at approximately $60 billion. And yet, the company is expected to offers shares at a valuation of $75-$100 billion.

The reported $3.8 billion in FB revenue is not an official number. It came from a CNBC reporter who cited undisclosed sources. Official revenue would have to be about $6 billion for FB to have the 16x ratio.

Re: Facebook to File for IPO Next Week

#97
post #54

Well, honestly I think that buying Facebook shares right now is a high risk move. While it is possible maybe to forecast some ups and downs in the immediate following days, if the evaluation actually goes to 100 billions it'd look scary to me. I'm not saying that Facebook is dying or that it's gonna die anytime soon, but I am not able to foresee any significant growth. The article compared, with sort of negative term…

Remember: Google was a search engine, and Amazon was a book store. Facebook doesn't have to stay a social network, and there are plenty of things they can do with their resources. There's a lot you can do once you have a global network of users assembled.

Like what?

Chat and games are excluded, as Facebook was doing that before having a global network of users assembled.

Re: Facebook to File for IPO Next Week

#99

Well, honestly I think that buying Facebook shares right now is a high risk move. While it is possible maybe to forecast some ups and downs in the immediate following days, if the evaluation actually goes to 100 billions it'd look scary to me. I'm not saying that Facebook is dying or that it's gonna die anytime soon, but I am not able to foresee any significant growth. The article compared, with sort of negative term…

Google was underpriced at the IPO; there's no indication that stocks should be systematically underpriced to the same extent. Since Google went public, investors have learned a lot more about how these business models work, and how quickly they can build durable competitive advantages. If "Can it go up 5X" were the threshold for going public, investors would price this in, so the actual threshold would drop. The bull…

> If "Can it go up 5X" were the threshold for going public, investors would price this in, so the actual threshold would drop.

I agree with this. All I'm saying is that most companies can in general grow, and so it depends on you whether or not you want to buy stocks.

In Google case, they underestimated it. And who bought might be doing quite well right now.

In Facebook case, in my opinion they aren't underestimating it, and I just think it's hard to grow much more than they are already.

First, they have already 1 billion users (order of magnitude). There is no way they can go to 10 billions, just because they don't exist.

Second, I believe that the external pressure from other companies will somehow kick in, not allowing one only company to rule the world. Maybe some anti monopoly laws, some other platform, a yahoo -> google effect, I don't know.

It just seems unlikely to me that Facebook will be doing much much better. I may be wrong, but in the long run I'd still buy GOOG or AAPL towards whatever Facebook code will be.

What the stock will do in the short run is a different thing, maybe boosted by the media, who knows...

Re: Facebook to File for IPO Next Week

#100
post #46
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wall Street made a mistake with Google, since now their shares now are worth 5 times as much as they were at the opening. August 2004: Gold $405 Google $85/share (thought it was $100/share, huh) Now: Gold $1735 Google $576/share 1735/405 ~= 4.27 85*4.27 ~= 364 So no, Google's shares are not worth 5 times more. They value went up some 50% in six years, which is great but nothing scary.

Once I can buy food directly with my 1oz of gold, I'll buy your gold-based-valuation argument. Comparing one asset (share of GOOG) vs. another, namely, gold is silly when you contrast to assigning currency value. Last I checked, food hasn't become 4x more expensive, so things still revolve around currency (or currencies), not the value of gold.

You should check again. While food prices haven't quadrupled they have doubled...

According to the IMF Commodity Price Index, at least. http://www.imf.org/external/np/res/commod/index.aspx

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