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Your post seems to be implying that Facebook hasn't found a business model, and that a day of reckoning will come "the second they start charging". However, Fac
by mlinsey 16y ago
Your post seems to be implying that Facebook hasn't found a business model, and that a day of reckoning will come "the second they start charging". However, Facebook is already charging for advertisements, that's how they earned about $355 million in profits in the first 3/4 of 2010: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/01/goldmans_leaked_details_on_fac.html http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/01/goldmans_leaked_details...
In contrast, National Semiconductor earned about $220 million in profits for approximately the same period: http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:NSM http://www.google.com/finance?client=ob&q=NYSE:NSM (not exactly the same months, because their Q1 goes from Dec-Feb, but still a useful point of comparison)
One can make the case that Facebook is overvalued, perhaps even grossly overvalued, but to say that it should be valued at less than National Semiconductor is a big stretch, even if you are very conservative and use only current bottom-line financials. In my experience, those who make such statements are not basing their opinion on fundamentals of the companies, but on an opinion that companies like National Semiconductor do "real" engineering as opposed to "frivolous" social networking sites like Facebook. It's discouraging to see such attitudes, but they are not new: both early internet companies (including ones that survived the bubble and turned out to be sound companies) as well as early PC-era companies were also derided as toys or fads.
- alain94040 16y agoExactly. I have no doubt that Facebook's profits could easily triple in the next two years. For National Semi, I wouldn't bet on it :-) So yes, a somewhat larger valuation for Facebook than National sounds reasonable. So, $6B -> $15B, $20B.