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Andreessen Horowitz Sells a Third of its Facebook Shares

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Re: Andreessen Horowitz Sells a Third of its Facebook Shares

#41

Post by majani »

sharkweek wrote: post #31
majani wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still have two billion dollar opportunities that they are sitting on: 1. An Adsense competitor 2. Video ads These are not wild predictions of possible revenue streams. Facebook has already launched these features to select partners and when they are launched to the public, their stock will jump a lot more.

I am waiting for a good explanation as to why they haven't started an Adsense competitor yet; seems like it would be a goldmine

Facebook's game is to show that they can act on the grand old online media promise: that they first get loads of users, then later they can turn on the revenue streams and the cash comes pouring in.

Facebook is living up to this promise with the way they turned on mobile ads and they are now bringing in over a billion dollars annually. I think they want to maximize on that opportunity first, then turn on another revenue stream after mobile ad growth starts to slow. If they pull this off, they will be Wall Street darlings

Re: Andreessen Horowitz Sells a Third of its Facebook Shares

#42

Post by codex »

tptacek wrote: post #32
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if they still believed in FB's vision, why would they dump so much stock? 1/3 sounds like a lot to me.

If they don't believe in FB's vision, why would they retain 2/3rds of their Fb holdings? What a silly comment.

Because they believe in Facebook's vision 33% less than they used to?

Re: Andreessen Horowitz Sells a Third of its Facebook Shares

#43

Post by confluence »

cdf wrote: post #14
confluence wrote: post #8

Facebook is about 4x over fair value, so it's a pretty decent sale. It's too bad for the public investors that bought that shit up though. There should probably be a basic financial test that people should have to pass before they get access to a brokerage account. At some of the prices I'm seeing stock clearing, it's obvious that the buyers have not actually read any financial reports. Something like a basic written…

So what if you know your balance sheet, income statement, FCF, capex, when you are analysing Enron or Lehman Brothers? If you are so sure Facebook is overvalued, how big is your short position? Guaranteed win right? Can you guarantee Microsoft won't swoop in to buy Facebook at 5x over "fair value"? I think we have reached the point where is conventional wisdom that "professional" fund managers struggle to outperform…

I own puts. Outdoing index funds is easy. Investing is just like any other job. You do something cheaply than sell it for more. If the vast majority of fund managers are below average, than so to are the vast majority of doctors, lawyers and engineers. Investing isn't a special industry. Most surgeons are actively bad for their patients as compared to the average. Most engineers are bad for their projects compared to the average. Most lawyers are bad for contracts compared to the average. That's just how the world works.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz Sells a Third of its Facebook Shares

#44

Post by Retric »

tptacek wrote: post #32
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if they still believed in FB's vision, why would they dump so much stock? 1/3 sounds like a lot to me.

If they don't believe in FB's vision, why would they retain 2/3rds of their Fb holdings? What a silly comment.

Because dumping enough stock reduces the price so waiting a a week or more between sell offs is a good idea.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz Sells a Third of its Facebook Shares

#45

Post by tptacek »

Retric wrote: post #44
tptacek wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't believe in FB's vision, why would they retain 2/3rds of their Fb holdings? What a silly comment.

Because dumping enough stock reduces the price so waiting a a week or more between sell offs is a good idea.

Obviously nobody js going to remember you saying this a week from now when they don't in fact unload another block of Fb, or reconcile the comment against Fb's price next week. It's just typical message board BS, is the bet I'm willing to place.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz Sells a Third of its Facebook Shares

#46

Post by blisterpeanuts »

tptacek wrote: post #32
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if they still believed in FB's vision, why would they dump so much stock? 1/3 sounds like a lot to me.

If they don't believe in FB's vision, why would they retain 2/3rds of their Fb holdings? What a silly comment.

> If they don't believe in FB's vision, why would they retain 2/3rds of their Fb holdings? What a silly comment.

It wasn't a comment; it was a question.

What's silly is to respond with a fact-free retort that provides no value whatsoever to the discussion.

Although I'm no investing expert, it's my long-held understanding that investors don't hold onto stocks that they expect to go down, and investors don't sell stocks that are expected to rise.

Currently Facebook is generally recommended as a "buy" or a "strong buy", and price targets are around $60. It's possible that Andreessen's motivations had nothing to do with their expectations of the stock's performance (versus other stocks that they may have set their sites on) but I tend to doubt it.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz Sells a Third of its Facebook Shares

#47

Post by ams6110 »

josephagoss wrote: post #30
resu_nimda wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Who cares if millions of people take bad loans that they have no chance of repaying? That's their own fault, they should know better." And yet, look at how deeply the entire world was affected. People need to be protected from themselves for the well-being of society. Also, are you Ayn Rand or something? Your only point of argument here is that people should be given more opportunity to ruin the lives of their famil…

You make an interesting counterpoint. I was assuming the person led themselves to buying shares of their own free will and not enticed by a bank or other power with malicious intent. I think in your example the banks should really have been punished more as it was their doing that caused the crisis by misleading millions of people.

The banks were pushed to do it by the feds.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz Sells a Third of its Facebook Shares

#48

Post by prostoalex »

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #20
kayoone wrote: post #2

TLDR Nothing to interesting, they got in relatively late and are now selling a part to give it back to investors while still keeping the majority of their shares, so this has nothing todo with them not trusting in Facebooks vision any longer.

But if they still believed in FB's vision, why would they dump so much stock? 1/3 sounds like a lot to me.

Their fund has a termination date. They don't want to be forced to sell on that date.

Re: Andreessen Horowitz Sells a Third of its Facebook Shares

#49

Post by prostoalex »

sharkweek wrote: post #31
majani wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still have two billion dollar opportunities that they are sitting on: 1. An Adsense competitor 2. Video ads These are not wild predictions of possible revenue streams. Facebook has already launched these features to select partners and when they are launched to the public, their stock will jump a lot more.

I am waiting for a good explanation as to why they haven't started an Adsense competitor yet; seems like it would be a goldmine

For Google, AdSense solved the problem of limited inventory, i.e. there were just that many searches for "digital camera" and AdSense provided an opportunity to boost the inventory of potential ad venues to people who don't actively search.

What value would a third-party ad placement program provide to Facebook, who's already sitting on trillion+ ad displays per day, and has no shortage of inventory?

Re: Andreessen Horowitz Sells a Third of its Facebook Shares

#50

Post by loceng »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #25
loceng wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is they're not that confident the stock will go up much more. Sure, you could look at it as spreading risk.

If that were true, they would liquidate much more aggressively. I don't know how much total value in shares they have left, but if you're a venture investor, your goal isn't to tie up all your money in ventures that have already broken through; your goal is to find the next one. If all they wanted to do is go long on stocks, they could do that without all the venture investing.

If they started to liquidate quickly, so would everyone else - and they'd piss off their co-investors too if they didn't do it fully planned out. Regarding going long on investments in a different way - that won't bring them the same return.
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