Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 831 posts

Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs

#291

Post by the_watcher »

tomkarlo wrote: post #282
the_watcher wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also got to add in the 1 million users they have been adding a month. It doesn't substantially change the numbers unless that growth continues for a long time, but Facebook didn't pay for their numbers today, but the numbers they expect them to have in the future.

At 400M users, how much more are they really going to grow? Maybe 2-4x. They're at a point where they're almost bounded by the number of people on earth with mobile devices.

Well, given that there are roughly 7 billion people on earth, and the number with mobile phones is currently 4.3 billion, that means WhatsApp is at 9% penetration of a still growing market. I think they can grow a little bit more than you estimate, and regardless, 4x of 400mm is an increase of 1.2 billion users.

Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs

#293

Post by alex_young »

higherpurpose wrote: post #261
sheetjs wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only strengthens my argument: market values at ~225 / active user

And how many decades will Facebook need to make that money from its users? How many decades will it need to make it from Whatsapp?

Facebook made $2.14 / user in Q4 2013 [0]. That means they need more than 26 years to return that value.

Or they need to find a way to increase revenue greatly without alienating users too much...

[0] http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-NJ5DZ/2971107785... (page 12)

Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs

#294

Post by diminoten »

Karunamon wrote: post #3

Welp. There's another app that I won't be accepting any updates for from now on...

I'm glad people are finally realizing what they're giving up for convenience.

I personally don't mind having no privacy if everything becomes super convenient, but at least people are cognizant of the tradeoff now.

Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs

#295

Post by the_watcher »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #184
nwh wrote: post #60

400,000,000 active users [0] 16,000,000,000 USD ---- $40 per user That's an incredible cost. We can assume Facebook is paying for the userbase, the app itself and it's infrastructure would basically run itself. It's less appealing when you realise that there's probably a miniscule fraction of WhatsApp users that don't have a Facebook account. > WhatsApp will remain autonomous and operate independently. You can contin…

I conjecture that this price is a reflection of the fact that facebook realizes their stock is way overvalued, and so they used this opportunity to make a huge purchase which would be too expensive otherwise. The fact that a huge amount of the purchase price in stock is a strong signal for this. These same sorts of deals happened in the first internet bubble (although this is clearly different as there is also a huge…

Why is their stock overvalued? Do you have any evidence of this beyond you thinking there is a bubble? Honestly curious, since it seems to me their stock is rising for a reason: the fundamentals of the company are strong, and they have demonstrated an ability to rapidly react to new trends.

Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs

#296

Post by jcfrei »

flyinglizard wrote: post #176
josh2600 wrote: post #104

For everyone saying this is a waste of money, consider the commentary around Instagram at $1B. Basically the world said that this was a horrible acquisition at the time, but in retrospect, buying Instagram was quite cheap. Buying your closest competitor for less than 15% of your market cap is usually a good idea. Fast forward to today. What'sapp is the dominant messaging application across the world. Carriers hate it…

Your argument makes perfect sense when you're talking about real companies, with R&D, marketing, technology and all that. GM buying Tesla for 15% of its worth might make sense. But in the social space, companies are entirely seasonal, the barriers to entry are none, there's no way to predict user traction or behavior. I understand this is how Facebook intends to keep itself at the top of the social heap, but with rec…

Couldn't agree more. I guess most of us remember the MSN messenger. Back then me and my teenage friends thought it would stick around forever - up until skype came along.

Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs

#297

Post by spiantino »

nwh wrote: post #142
sheetjs wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try this: FB market cap ~170B .75B users (EDIT: originally quoted FB 1.2B users, but that is the total count and WhatsApp quotes active users) --> market cap implies roughly $225 per active user. In that light, 40/AU is cheap. Even if you assume 50% overlap, 80/AU is still a deal compared to how the market values FB users

I was using active users as a metric in my parent comment, using the same measure Facebook has 750M active users for a cost of $227USD per user. [0]: http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=821954

1.2B is monthly active, 750 is daily active. FB doesn't publish just registered users.

Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs

#299

Post by adventured »

smackfu wrote: post #140
nwh wrote: post #60

400,000,000 active users [0] 16,000,000,000 USD ---- $40 per user That's an incredible cost. We can assume Facebook is paying for the userbase, the app itself and it's infrastructure would basically run itself. It's less appealing when you realise that there's probably a miniscule fraction of WhatsApp users that don't have a Facebook account. > WhatsApp will remain autonomous and operate independently. You can contin…

Twitter: 241,000,000 active users 30,230,000,000 USD market cap ---- $125 per user

With the caveat being that Twitter isn't rationally worth anywhere near $30 billion. Even if you said their sales was income, they'd be trading at nearly 50 times, and at that point they'd still be worth twice too much.

Here's a prediction: as the easy money QE party comes to an end, the stock market melts, Twitter's growth grinds to a complete halt, investors realize there's only so much time in the day and Twitter has lost the messaging space, Twitter is worth $5 to $7 billion if they're lucky.

Re: Facebook Buying WhatsApp for $16B in Cash and Stock Plus $3B in RSUs

#300

Post by lifeisstillgood »

pitchups wrote: post #246
muyuu wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made more sense for MS though. They were basically kickstarting their internet services and had very few users. Facebook can mine some more data from this I guess, but something rather marginal from what they already have.

True, the reasons are different. But the motivation is the same : to stay ahead of the competition. In my view, and based on my own experience, Whatsapp is being used as a light-weight social network built around messaging and optimized for mobile phones. In fact, I share a lot more stuff with friends and family on Whatsapp - including pictures/videos/messages - than I do on Facebook. The more Whatsapp satisifies my…

yes yes and yes.

But boy - 16 billion.

Post reply on HN