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

Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation

dealbook.nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 130 posts

Re: Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation

#81

Post by code_duck »

pavs wrote: post #60
dave1619 wrote: post #24

Congrats to Facebook and their team. Well-deserved for building a site millions love.

For some reason I find it hard to love facebook and I am not sure I understand why. I am certainly not jealous of their (relatively) easier path to glory or I am too suspicious about their lapses in user privacy (most companies had their fair share, including google). Yet I find it easier to like google as a companies and not like facebook at all. Anyone else feels like this? I think, to me, facebook reminds me of mi…

I see them as the new Microsoft as well. Something about how their style of 'innovation'.

Re: Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation

#82

Post by jacquesm »

seiji wrote: post #33
anta wrote: post #19

Can someone explain how fb is worth 50B? I.e. how much revenue are they making/projected to make, and how was this number arrived at?

Anecdotally, I know a few companies spending between $15k and $50k+ per day on facebook's version of adwords to shovel the masses into games. You know how people attribute worth to meaningless points in games? Kid CEOs these days attribute worth to the live-updating user stats (DAUs and MAUs, oh my) of their facebook casual-social-viral games. They'll do anything to make those numbers go up, including spending $200k…

How do those companies make back their ad investment?

Re: Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation

#83

Post by yummyfajitas »

borism wrote: post #72
pmorici wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"if you wanted to piss the SEC off and get into trouble." How many officials in the current administration are former Goldman Sachs employees? Do you think that affects the likelihood of them getting into trouble?

How many officials in any administration are former Goldman Sachs employees? What does that have to do with anything anyway?

The implicit assumption is that people are willing to subvert their current employer for the benefit of their former employer (perhaps with the hope of being rehired by the former employer).

Re: Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation

#85

Post by borism »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #83
borism wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many officials in any administration are former Goldman Sachs employees? What does that have to do with anything anyway?

The implicit assumption is that people are willing to subvert their current employer for the benefit of their former employer (perhaps with the hope of being rehired by the former employer).

Yup, let's judge people by their former employers, not by their actions. I mean, Hank Paulson's decision not to bail out Lehman would have been totally OK, have he not been former Goldman CEO...

Re: Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation

#86

Post by afterburner »

borism wrote: post #85
yummyfajitas wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implicit assumption is that people are willing to subvert their current employer for the benefit of their former employer (perhaps with the hope of being rehired by the former employer).

Yup, let's judge people by their former employers, not by their actions. I mean, Hank Paulson's decision not to bail out Lehman would have been totally OK, have he not been former Goldman CEO...

Not sure how many (if any) layers of sarcasm to strip away, so I'll just say: Hank Paulson's decision not to bail out Lehman was not OK regardless. His former employer simply might have informed that incorrect (for the US/world in general) decision. Simple bias; had GS been on the chopping block, I can personally guarantee he would not have advised letting it tank.

Re: Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation

#87

Post by shiftpgdn »

jacquesm wrote: post #82
seiji wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, I know a few companies spending between $15k and $50k+ per day on facebook's version of adwords to shovel the masses into games. You know how people attribute worth to meaningless points in games? Kid CEOs these days attribute worth to the live-updating user stats (DAUs and MAUs, oh my) of their facebook casual-social-viral games. They'll do anything to make those numbers go up, including spending $200k…

How do those companies make back their ad investment?

More ads.

Re: Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation

#88

Post by Retric »

ZachPruckowski wrote: post #50
brown9-2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who even says they would pay dividends? How many tech companies do nowadays?

Stocks make investors (contrasted with traders) money either by (a) going up in price or (b) paying a dividend every quarter. In order to make your stock price go up, you have to show not just profits, but growing profits. With something like Wal-Mart, this just means either cutting costs or selling more stuff to more customers. However, Facebook is going to (over the next few years) approach market saturation - they…

A company can also buy its own stock. In the short term this has little impact on the stock price, but as future profits are shared among a smaller pool of investors you can cycle though rising price and splits even with a stable income stream.

PS: This is only really efficient when the P:E hovers around 10:1 but it has great tax implications for long term investors.

Re: Goldman Sachs invests in Facebook at $50 Billion valuation

#90

Post by nkassis »

stretchwithme wrote: post #39
wheels wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10:1 would be a fairly low P/E anytime soon for Facebook. They might need to settle there when they're a 35 year old company like Microsoft (which is currently at 12:1). Google is at 24:1 right now and Amazon and Netflix are pretty hot at the moment with 66:1 and 72:1 respectively.

I think 10:1 was the eventual P/E that would have to materialize to justify the $50 billion valuation. I think the historical average is something like 15.

but they have 30 years to reach that. The historical average is probably brought down by much more mature companies. Most tech corps today are 20+, hell Apple and Oracle have almost same P/E at 20 which might be the new average for tech.

10:1 is low.

Post reply on HN