Its funny. You can mark this post. Park your entire trading portfolio in this thing at $170 and come back in a year. I'd be willing to bet we'd all be better off. Who knows.
Peter Thiel sells one-third of his Facebook shares Peter Thiel, Facebook’s first big investor, has sold more than $10 million worth of the company's shares in the last week – a significant chunk of his surprisingly small remaining stake in the social network. The billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur, who remains on Facebook's board, sold 60,316 shares of his class A shares, worth about $10.4 million, according to securities documents filed July 28.(San Jose Biz Journal)
Does anyone besides me think facebooks finances are a total scam? Their revenue last quarter was as much as coca-cola(KO)! We all know 100s of people that drink coke, but when was the last time someone you know advertised through facebook(not just trying it out, but actually consistently advertise though it)? And lets not forget about all the failures of facebook. FB paid $3B for oculus ($2B for oculus + $1B in employee retention packages) and how many units were sold last year? 355k @ $700 each = $248M and now the price has dropped to $399 for the rift + touch. $19 billion for whatsapp. Pretty sure that's going to be a losing proposition that they will never get their money back on. And what's with all the facebook insiders dumping shares like there is no tommorrow? Zuckerberg dumping $42 million ever 2 weeks. Jan Koum has sold $1.8 billion worth of stock since February. These guys are cashing out. But I really feel like these guys are fudging the numbers for revenue and income to keep the price going up. Zuckerberg is not an honest guy, I think we know that, but I also think FB has enough cash to keep this ponzi scheme going for years longer. I think the plan here is cash out, then fix the books(show a loss) for a few quarters so the actual revenue is finally reported and not the fake one they report now, watch the stock tank to $10 or $20 per share, then use that $6 billion they set aside for buybacks in 2016 that has no expiration date to buy back as much stock as possible while Zuck and his buddies rig a buyout at a cheap price to take the company private. This company stinks so much of corruption, I'm surprised nobody talks about it.
I've been doing some modelling of Facebook and, while I think the company has great vision and management, it seems very hard to justify the current price. Even forecasting revenues >$100bn by 2021, which is about 3x current levels, it still seems to fall 30% short of the current price. Can it really justify the current price? I am neither long nor short - I'd suggest it is a risky time to be either. The underlying model is in an excel file, happy to send on if people want to play with it. Just private message me your email address and I'll send it across.
I do wonder...I doubt they still have a growing audience, and I'm sure they've maximized the ad revenue without making the interface onerous. What's next, sell user info?
Facebook Shares Look Like a Bargain https://www.barrons.com/articles/facebook-shares-look-like-a-bargain-1521849601
Facebook's Carolyn Everson goes on the defense Carolyn Everson, VP of global marketing solutions at Facebook, says she actually started her fix-it tour (our words) days before CEO Mark Zuckerberg ventured out to speak on the Cambridge Analytica affair. She called the company's top advertisers the day after Facebook first acknowledged the harvesting of data from some 50 million Facebook users by Cambridge Analytica. Then she sent an email to a wider circle of advertisers – an email some agency exces tell Ad Age was formulaic.(Ad Age)
FTC confirms it is probing Facebook The Federal Trade Commission confirmed it is conducting an investigation into Facebook's privacy practices. "The FTC is firmly and fully committed to using all of its tools to protect the privacy of consumers," Tom Pahl, the acting director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in an emailed statementMonday.(Ad Age)
Ad pullback could give Facebook worst month since 2012 Facebook is heading toward its worst month in more than five years after an analyst report warned of a temporary pullback in advertising and the FTC confirmed it's investigating the social network's privacy practices. Facebook shares fell Monday, bucking the broader positive direction of the markets and putting them on course for the worst month since August 2012. Facebook has lost about $100 billion in market value in the past 10 days.(Ad Age)