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Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

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Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#51

Post by scolson »

pkaye wrote: post #45
scolson wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get many/most prefer to be the product than the customer. I, however, would love the option to switch.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to give options. I think Google has given this option for their ad network... I wonder how many people subscribe to that.

To the best of my understanding, you can opt out of personalized ads with google, but not all ads. At least for the search product.

For email, one can pay for their google apps tier, which doesn't have ads, but it is obviously targeted to business users, so the value prop is completely different anyway.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#52

Post by scolson »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #38
scolson wrote: post #33

So wait... In the US, my "value" to facebook is about $100 a year? (~24/q rounded up) Can I subscribe to facebook and opt out of all advertising and any data sharing exposure with third-parties? That is totally worth $8-10/mo to me. Edit: I get it. You don't like this idea, or you don't think it will work, or you don't think facebook's investors will like it (full disclosure: I am one). Why on earth should that stop…

What if you could sell the data to a third party for $10+ dollars? (I’m working on a project to do this ) Also, you would need your friends to opt out too? Or at least turn on timeline review. It seems paradoxical to share your information and also require it to be private .

Personally, I would not sell access to my data.

Re friends opting out, no, you would just need the system to exclude individuals who have the opt-out attribute from the graph search. But I do also have timeline review turned on and have for years.

I get that I am probably a minority user of Facebook, in that I have very customized security and privacy settings. To me, there has always been value in choosing with whom to share certain information. It isn't a global binary function.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#53

Post by adventured »

JBReefer wrote: post #46
gizmodo59 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true not just for Facebook. Consumer spending per person in US is very high compared to many other countries in the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_consumer_marke... The businesses that wants to run ads also spend a lot. Its also true for Enterprise Software to some extent. I work for an enterprise software company and despite having had a decade of presence and having been founded in Eur…

People don't understand how much wealthier the US is than most of the Western World. I realize, and please don't harp on, the fact that healthcare and college aren't free here, but the median German makes the less money than the median income in all but 9 states, and it becomes substantially more unequal when you look at PPP. https://mises.org/wire/if-sweden-and-germany-became-us-state... Now, if you want to talk abo…

There isn't lower crime in the EU. The EU has between a higher rate or a similar rate of violent crime and crime in general vs the US (varying depending on which country you're talking about). The US rate of crime compares well to most developed nations. [1] The US has a far higher murder rate thanks to its policies on gun regulation.

There is not less absurd politics in the EU. It's every bit as crazy over there right now. See: Italy, Hungary, the extreme right in the Netherlands, Greece, Poland, Denmark's recent policies on immigrant ghettos, and on and on.

The EU includes a lot of mid-tier countries. Poor people in the US get free healthcare and average welfare benefits that are far higher than the median incomes of all the mid-tier nations in the EU. The OECD better life index has persistently indicated that the US poor live better than the poor in any other nations except for half a dozen or so (such as Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland). In the US it's primarily the 20% group above the poorest 20%, that do the worst compared to other developed nations - they often make too much money to qualify for free healthcare, their income potential is weak, their education opportunities are weak, they suffer much higher rates of bankruptcy, and they often don't qualify fully for traditional assistance programs (housing or food).

[1] https://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9217163/america-guns-europe

[1a] http://news.gallup.com/poll/21346/crime-rate-lower-united-st...

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#54

Post by kgwgk »

adventured wrote: post #48
kgwgk wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is whether that can justify a valuation 30 times as large.

They're tracking to around a likely ~$23 billion in net income for 2018. That's a 20 PE three quarters out. That's for 50% sales growth, 63% net income growth. That's a bargain in this market. Microsoft has hardly net grown its income in a decade and it's sporting a 30 PE; nearly all of their valuation increase the last five years is multiple inflation. Coca Cola has a 30 PE ratio and nearly zero growth for a decade.…

> That's a bargain in this market.

When this market changes, some of these companies might suffer more than the others. What is going to happen to advertising budgets (practically their only source of revenue) in the next recession? Facebook also faces higher regulatory and reputational risk (in the US and elsewhere) that most of those companies. But of course compared to Netflix it looks incredibly undervalued!

Edit: to be clear, I agree that Facebook's valuation is more reasonable than it used to be and more reasonable than other "similar" companies (but not without its own risks). By the way, it will be interesting to see how the sentiment around different sectors changes in September when a number of companies currently in IT and Discretionary/Media will be reclassified into the Communications sector.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#55

Post by malvosenior »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #49
roddux wrote: post #14

My main takeaway from this is that #deleteFacebook has been a flash in the pan-- their active user count is still increasing across all regions. Also to note, FB only pay effectively 11% tax on some 12 billion dollars worth of revenue.

Yeah, I may have to eat some crow from an argument the other day with another HN user. Surveys and #deleteFacebook and protests and so forth seemed to indicate that people did finally start getting interested in their own privacy. But no. Somehow, even with a declining youth demographic and widespread reports of less time spent on site and the CA fiasco, they still ended up with a growth of users in all markets. I've…

> I've wondered sometimes whether we're headed towards a post-privacy world, and what it'll look like -- not just one in which there is little privacy, but one in which privacy is not something that most people think about or value.

I think we already live in that reality. The media really honed in on the sharing of your friends list in the case of CA but if you think about it, there are plenty of services where that is public by default (like Twitter). I don't think most people consider that to be sensitive information.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#56

Post by heedlessly3 »

spyspy wrote: post #22
mbesto wrote: post #15

$16B in FCF in 2017 Thats what you call "printing cash".

I've been long FB for a very long time now, and took the recent dip to grab some more. People can complain about Facebook in terms of privacy all they want, but as a company they are killing it.

i remember people saying that Apple hardware and software quality has dwindle over the past couple years. They might be right, however, their 2017 Q3 revenues hit a new record.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#57

Post by conanbatt »

whyenot wrote: post #36

The median salary package at FB is $240,430[1]. Now I understand how that is possible. 1. http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-median-pay-240000-20... edit: salary package (salary, bonuses, and stock grants), not salary alone

Dang, thats a lot of money. Though last year was a great year for stocks in general, I wonder how much that would change in a bear market.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#58

Post by rconti »

scolson wrote: post #33

So wait... In the US, my "value" to facebook is about $100 a year? (~24/q rounded up) Can I subscribe to facebook and opt out of all advertising and any data sharing exposure with third-parties? That is totally worth $8-10/mo to me. Edit: I get it. You don't like this idea, or you don't think it will work, or you don't think facebook's investors will like it (full disclosure: I am one). Why on earth should that stop…

Funny, my only problem with this comment is the edit itself.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#59

Post by malvosenior »

scolson wrote: post #33

So wait... In the US, my "value" to facebook is about $100 a year? (~24/q rounded up) Can I subscribe to facebook and opt out of all advertising and any data sharing exposure with third-parties? That is totally worth $8-10/mo to me. Edit: I get it. You don't like this idea, or you don't think it will work, or you don't think facebook's investors will like it (full disclosure: I am one). Why on earth should that stop…

> I am sick of being the product and I'd love to opt out of that process

You can opt out. Don't use Facebook.

Re: Facebook Q1 2018 Earnings Slides [pdf]

#60

Post by samfisher83 »

roddux wrote: post #14

My main takeaway from this is that #deleteFacebook has been a flash in the pan-- their active user count is still increasing across all regions. Also to note, FB only pay effectively 11% tax on some 12 billion dollars worth of revenue.

Maybe most people just don't care all that much about privacy. They just want to share their picture with friends.
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