10 ms·

Facebook's S-1 Filing

413 points by hornokplease 15y ago

rplnt 15y ago
The site is really slow for me, maybe it's getting overloaded or ... something else. Either way, could someone post a summary of the filing? If I remember correctly there should be some pretty interesting figures; revenue, profit and so on.
- hornokplease 15y ago
  Here's a screencap of the summary financial data chart: http://i.imgur.com/c5pHt.png http://i.imgur.com/c5pHt.png
  - samstave 15y ago
    Wow, thats pretty interesting; the earnings per share. I would love to see that compared to users. Especially if new users flattened out somewhat compared to increasing revenues. I am not sure, but I dont think that FB userbase went up by 4.5x in the same period as did revenues. That means they are getting far better at monetizing the users/advertisers are willing to spend far more to advert to the users, than before.
portman 15y ago
EDGAR keeps timing out for me, anyone know of a mirror?
- bcn 15y ago
  http://www.scribd.com/doc/80163402/Facebook-S-1 http://www.scribd.com/doc/80163402/Facebook-S-1
dm8 15y ago
Wow.. $3.7 billion in revenues in 2011; $1 billion in profits. Out of curiosity, what were GOOG's revenue/profit numbers when they filed for IPO?
- cwe 15y ago
  In their S1, GOOG reported net income of $106M on $962M revenue. src: https://twitter.com/#!/goldman/status/164830894685818880 https://twitter.com/#!/goldman/status/164830894685818880
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
- gphil 15y ago
  Not as good. See here: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504073639/ds1.htm#toc16167_11 http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/00011931250407363...
  - nextparadigms 15y ago
    Google filed for IPO earlier in the company's life, though. Year per year, Google made more than Facebook.
- RobPfeifer 15y ago
  They're here: <a href="http://imgur.com/5YeNq><img http://imgur.com/5YeNq><img src="http://i.imgur.com/5YeNq.gif http://i.imgur.com/5YeNq.gif title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a> I saved this when I came across it a while back. Also, they had $961mm in net income the year they went out
- mun2mun 15y ago
  Looks like jacquesm lost a bet http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=689789 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=689789 :).
  - swalsh 15y ago
    To be fair, he said multiple billion in profit not revenue. Still has some ways to go.
    - 15y ago
zach 15y ago
Direct link to the text of the S-1: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034517/d287954ds1.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001193125120...
bradleyjg 15y ago
They are doing a dual class offering. The class B shares (i.e. those held by Zuckerberg and other insiders) are going to have ten times the voting rights as the class A shares. I wouldn't by into such an ownership structure, though to be fair, google has such a structure and those that bought that at IPO have done very well so far. From the risks section: As a result of voting agreements with certain stockholders, together with the shares he holds, Mark Zuckerberg, our founder, Chairman, and CEO, will be able to exercise voting rights with respect to an aggregate of XX shares of common stock, representing a majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock following our initial public offering. As a result, Mr. Zuckerberg has the ability to control the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors and any merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets. In addition, Mr. Zuckerberg has the ability to control the management and affairs of our company as a result of his position as our CEO and his ability to control the election of our directors. Additionally, in the event that Mr. Zuckerberg controls our company at the time of his death, control may be transferred to a person or entity that he designates as his successor. As a board member and officer, Mr. Zuckerberg owes a fiduciary duty to our stockholders and must act in good faith in a manner he reasonably believes to be in the best interests of our stockholders. As a stockholder, even a controlling stockholder, Mr. Zuckerberg is entitled to vote his shares, and shares over which he has voting control as a result of voting agreements, in his own interests, which may not always be in the interests of our stockholders generally.
- tlrobinson 15y ago
  How many other public companies have a single stockholder with majority voting power?
  - jmackinn 15y ago
    Frank Stronach, of Magna International, held a voting majority for over 30 years, despite actually owning a minority share of the company.
- nknight 15y ago
  > I wouldn't by into such an ownership structure I would under some circumstances, but there are absolutely no circumstances under which I would be prepared to invest in a company where one person has majority voting power. At least with Google, no single person's psychotic break can bring down the company.
apike 15y ago
It turns out that Zynga only accounts for 12% of their revenue. "In 2011, Zynga accounted for approximately 12% of our revenue, which amount was comprised of revenue derived from payments processing fees related to Zynga’s sales of virtual goods and from direct advertising purchased by Zynga. Additionally, Zynga’s apps generate a significant number of pages on which we display ads from other advertisers." It appears they would still be profitable without Zynga.
- veyron 15y ago
  "Zynga’s apps generate a significant number of pages on which we display ads from other advertisers" Are those ads counted toward the 12% statistic?
  - anonymoushn 15y ago
    Based on my reading of the quote, the 12% does not include ads displayed on pages generated by Zynga apps.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - brd 15y ago
    85% of revenue is from advertising. So either Zynga controls 80% of all non advertising revenue (aka the remaining 15%) or that 12% figure includes advertisements served on Zynga pages. Is it reasonable to conclude that Zynga constitutes 80% of FB's credit ecosystem?
    - veyron 15y ago
      Sadly the answer is yes (it is reasonable to assume 80% of FB's credit ecosystem targets Zynga assets). Check out Zynga's S-1 (since, thanks to the deal, most of zynga's revenue comes through FB credits, and those numbers will have been discounted because of FB's cut)
    - jim-greer 15y ago
      No, the 12% includes advertisements Zynga buys from Facebook, but not ads that appear on their pages. "In 2011, Zynga accounted for approximately 12% of our revenue, which amount was comprised of revenue derived from payments processing fees related to Zynga’s sales of virtual goods and from direct advertising purchased by Zynga. Additionally, Zynga’s apps generate a significant number of pages on which we display ads from other advertisers."
CWIZO 15y ago
As someone that lives in EU (as in, not in USA) and has no clue about stock market: what would be the easiest way for me to get a couple of hundred € worth of stocks in FB? Is that even possible?
- Tichy 15y ago
  I also don't really have a clue, but I think if you have a "trading depot" with some bank, they will offer you several stock exchanges to trade on. So you could pick some US stock exchange and buy the shares there.
- Mvandenbergh 15y ago
  Probably not, no. Most IPO shares are sold to large clients of brokerages. One of the inducements that large investment banks offer independent brokerages who use their services is letting them offer hot IPO stocks to some of their major customers.
- hkolk 15y ago
  Probably best to find a local broker that is on nasdaq. In the Netherlands, I would advise Binck or something similar. I personally have my companies stock in eTrade, but that is because that is how I received it :) It can be tricky to get into the IPO though. Don't know the details on those rules.
- spinchange 15y ago
  You're not going to get in on the IPO price. That's for the banks who are selling to their very top-tier clients before it even starts trading on the exchange, basically. Look into what is involved in buying stock in any American company from the EU. If you're still interested, you can pick up a few shares after it's trading on the exchanges.
- patd 15y ago
  You need to buy them on the day they IPO. You will not be able to buy it at the IPO price but at the price of the first minute of trading. On top of that, "a couple of hundred €" is probably not enough money. The fees to buy stocks on the Nasdaq is usually in the tens of euro. You'll probably have between 10 and 50 euros of fees at the cheaper online trading platforms. You can also call your traditional bank to buy the stocks but the fees would probably be higher.
deleted 15y ago
[deleted]
- CWIZO 15y ago
  At least give context next time (I had to google for it): http://www.theonion.com/articles/facebook-to-launch-ipo,27234/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/facebook-to-launch-ipo,2723... edit: downvoter ... I just wanted to provide context for others so they wouldn't wonder what this is all about. I agree that this comment (parent) does not belong here ...
olivercameron 15y ago
Curiously, Sean Parker appears to not be on the top shareholders list[1], despite previously having a large %. Did he sell all of it on SecondMarket? 1. http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebooks-s-1-and-the-largest-shareholders-who-owns-what/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebooks-s-1-and-the-large...
- trotsky 15y ago
  While I don't know the specifics, it is very common for insiders to sell shares to new investors during later rounds. If I remember correctly, most of last year's goldman deal was from existing shareholders and not the company itself. So there is also a lot of opportunity to unload shares without using the formal markets as long as management is cooperative.
  - jpdoctor 15y ago
    > it is very common for insiders to sell shares to new investors during later rounds. Since when? Way back in the dark ages (2003), it was seen as a lack of faith in the company if the insiders were selling. It is the paradox of the sale: If you think the stock is about to double or triple, why would you part with any of it? Sensible folks would go get a loan, esp with interest rates so low.
    - trotsky 15y ago
      Since SOX? A perspective I've heard echoed by a few venture firms is that allowing insiders to sell a portion of the shares allows a bit of the pressure to come off and lets them focus on longer term value instead of wanting to rush into a liquidity event. Could be BS, who knows, but it's certainly happening.
      - georgemcbay 15y ago
        Seems completely reasonable to me. A bird in the hand is still worth two in the bush, even if you're pretty sure you can get the two (or four) in the bush later. Having been involved in a few startups where my equity was eventually valued at nothing, I'd certainly jump at the chance to sell some percentage of a future company I was involved with for real cash money even if I was pretty certain the stock might be worth more later.
sp332 15y ago
So what % of the company are they selling off for $5 Billion? I'm wondering what they're claiming the whole company to be worth.
- trotsky 15y ago
  All of those numbers will be preliminary, they won't actually decide on number of shares offered and offering price (which determines their claimed valuation) until just before the offering. It depends on market conditions and what the large institutions say they're willing to pay.
dxbydt 15y ago
It looks like the accountant put in the perfect round figure of 1000 million for 2011 Net Income& then backed out all the other entries :) I used to do exactly that in my Accountancy 101 exams - Q.write the income statement for Acme Corp. What do you want Net Income to be ? XXX $. That means, TCO must be XXX - yyy, R&D must be XXX - zzz, and similarly back out everything else. Not saying they actually did that, just that seeing such perfectly round numbers reminded me of those exam problems.
chintan 15y ago
<Interesting/> "Mobile" appears as risk factor in 2 instances. - Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where we do not currently display ads, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results; - Facebook user growth and engagement on mobile devices depend upon effective operation with mobile operating systems, networks, and standards that we do not control;
- ypcx 15y ago
  They will be able to exert any control they want on the Windows Phone through Microsoft. Also, what prevents them from showing ads in mobile apps? They did a great work locking everyone out of functionality that would enable direct FB access, app developers can only access FB as an FB app, so no ad-less competition there.
Sthorpe 15y ago
"In the first quarter of 2012, our compensation committee discussed and approved a request by our CEO to reduce his base salary to $1 per year, effective January 1, 2013." Awesome.
- craigbellot 15y ago
  I never understood why management sometimes take $1 salary. Doesn't the IRS see that as non reasonable compensation?
  - wmf 15y ago
    CEOs are still paying taxes on their non-salary compensation.
    - craigbellot 15y ago
      So what exactly is the purpose or benefit?
      - akkartik 15y ago
        PR.
      - jsb 15y ago
        Maybe to pay homage to Steve Jobs? Otherwise, I dunno.
      - mgse 15y ago
        Less tax impact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary
      - dekz 15y ago
        Probably to receive stock options in compensation. Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt have also done the same. They seem to be exempt from payroll taxes in the United Sates. [1]: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312506010016/d8k.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125060...
taylorwc 15y ago
3.711B in revenue and 3,200 employees at the end of 2011. That puts their revenue/employee numbers only slightly lower than Apple & Google, but beats Amazon. Impressive.
moxiemk1 15y ago
$1 Billion in profit => $1/(user year) in profit for 2011, correct? That's pretty darn good money, but not a huge amount more room for user-growth. They'll grow by having new businesses/making current ones more profitable. New business would have to be monetizable (eventually, at least), current businesses would either have to convert better or become less costly to run. Facebook is full of some smart cookies - it'll be interesting to see how they accomplish those paths.
- brd 15y ago
  I was thinking the same thing. Considering they have ~42% of all users (assuming the billion internet user estimate) there is only so much growth available from relying on their current model of acquiring users and serving ads to them. I would imagine a next logical step would be to expand its ad network beyond facebook (i.e. serve facebook ads outside of facebook itself), it would allow for a significant jump in growth potential while staying close to their core competency.
Toddward 15y ago
"We had 845 million monthly active users (MAUs) as of December 31, 2011." That blows some estimates out of the water.
mwytock 15y ago
Key information on revenue is on page 50. 85% of revenue comes from ads, which grew 69% Y/Y mostly driven by user growth (39% Y/Y) and showing a bunch more ads starting Q4 2010: 2011 Compared to 2010. Revenue in 2011 increased $1,737 million, or 88% compared to 2010. The increase was due primarily to a 69% increase in advertising revenue to $3,154 million. Advertising revenue grew due to a 42% increase in thenumber of ads delivered and an 18% increase in the average price per ad delivered. The increase in ads delivered was driven primarily by user growth. The number of ads delivered was also affected by many other factors including product changes that significantly increased the number of ads on many Facebook pages beginning in the fourth quarter of 2010, partially offset byan increase in usage of our mobile products, where we do not show ads, and by various product changes implemented in 2011that in aggregate modestly reduced the number of ads on certain pages. The increase in average price per ad delivered was affected by factors including improvements in our ability to deliver more relevant ads to users and product changes that contributed to higher user interaction with the ads by increasing their relative prominence.
- jcampbell1 15y ago
  The key information is on page 54-55: Why the massive jump in Q4 2011 revenue over Q3? It looks like there is a seasonality factor, but their explanation only covers Q4 2010, to Q4 2011. This is going to be a super volatile stock. If there Q1 2012 revenue is flat QoQ, this is probably a $50B company, if it is up 15%, then this is probably a $100B company.
- jcampbell1 15y ago
  The key information is on page 54-55: Why the massive jump in Q4 2011 revenue over Q3? It looks like there is a seasonality factor, but their explanation only covers Q4 2010, to Q4 2011. This is going to be a super volatile stock. If the Q1 2012 revenue is flat QoQ, this is probably a $50B company, if it is up 15%, then this is probably a $100B company.
  - mwytock 15y ago
    I was actually most curious to see if they had developed a source of revenue other than ads. It seems like the answer to that is mostly no, although they are working on payments. I agree that ads revenue growth will be key for them in the short term. The Q4 2011 vs 2010 growth was 44% and it seems like perhaps the growth rate is slowing down. Of course they're not yet showing ads on mobile..
omarish 15y ago
I'm curious as to what facebook did to generate $382k of revenue in 2004. Seems like a great start for a company of their size at the time. IIRC, they didn't turn on ads for a while afterwards. Link: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034517/g287954g71g62.jpg http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001193125120...
- scottkrager 15y ago
  Not sure about 2004 but I bought an ad on facebook in 2005. It was for a specific university and that was about the extent of the targeting if I remember correctly...
revorad 15y ago
Zuckerberg's letter is really fantastic -http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebook-ipo-letter/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebook-ipo-letter/. I'm really proud of him for clearly and loudly representing the hacker way when the whole world is watching.
- ColdAsIce 15y ago
  What makes Zuckerberg a hacker?
  - pja 15y ago
    So what if he isn't? He still gets the props for writing so clearly about his preference for that approach to product development. I suspect it's also a shout out to future potential employees that he doesn't intend FB to change focus or style as a consequence of going public.
  - mpeg 15y ago
    he made a website used by 800 million people? You might not necessarily agree with the extent the word "hacker" is applied to nowadays, but considering you are in a site called "hacker news" you probably should
lyime 15y ago
A small tidbit. FB paid Zuck $783,529 (3) in "other" compensation from his base 500k salary. (3) The fine print.... The amount reported represent approximately $692,679 for costs related to personal use of aircraft chartered in connection with his comprehensive security program and on which family and friends flew during 2011. Like a boss.
- sriramk 15y ago
  For someone worth close to $30b, compromising on things like flying and security seems silly. Amazed they aren't spending more.
  - phillmv 15y ago
    Eeeeeh, I think it's one of those executive privilege things. 1) If he's already flying domestically and first class, that shaves what? An hour? Please. 2) The company doesn't have to charter a jet to fly friends and family. So… let's just call it for the luxury that it is. They're not strapped for cash, after all. (Besides, just how liquid is Mark Zuckerberg? He's only a billionaire on paper, right?)
  - hga 15y ago
    Indeed. One should also remember that in the infinite wisdom of the Congress and whoever was President at the time, any cash salary over $1 million gets an extra tax on top of normal income taxes. Better to pay for his security in before tax dollars.
newhouseb 15y ago
One of the interesting gems in this filing is at the very end, it details stock grants for acquisitions so you can infer the running rate of talent acquisitions. So for example, "On February 28, 2011, we issued 681,357 shares of our Class A common stock as consideration to a company in connection with our purchase of certain assets from the company." You can cross reference these with news and correlate approximate acquisition cost based on the estimate value of price per share assuming, say, a valuation of $100 billion. So I'm guessing that the company I mentioned is Octazen and assuming a $100 billion valuation (~$50 per share), this comes out to about $35 million (assuming an entirely stock acquisition - note that Facebook spent, for example, $20 million aggregate in cash on acquisitions in 2010).
jonnathanson 15y ago
Facebook is heavily (heavily!) reliant on display advertising, all of which is a) challenged by the switch of its userbase to mobile, and b) going to hit critical mass eventually. No matter how smart you make display advertising, there's still a cap on how much you can foist onto users before you piss them off. IMO, Facebook's future depends on two things: 1) Figuring out how to serve up contextually relevant ads on mobile platforms in a nonintrusive and, ideally, useful way. 2) Figuring out how to serve up contextually relevant ads outside of Facebook, to Facebook Connect-backended partner sites and apps. (Sort of like an AdSense/AdWords hybrid, but based on very intelligent user-interest and browsing data). I'm betting on #2's being the runaway breadwinner for Facebook in the long run. The longterm strategy seems to be to reduce reliance/dependence on Facebook.com in favor of Facebook Connect.
- ig1 15y ago
  #2 doesn't require them to do anything special, Facebook ads are driven off user demographics and not page context.
  - mahmud 15y ago
    Facebook delivered us 200k uniques. Zero conversions. Google brings us a few hundred a day, consisten conversion. Apparel retail. FWIW. As far as I'm concerned FB traffic is junk. Comes handy for load-testing though.
    - pork 15y ago
      Zero conversions from 200k uniques? Are you sure your conversion tracking isn't broken?
    - robryan 15y ago
      Facebook is horrible for any kind of direct sale, the ads I see are rarely trying to sell anything directly. More people are trying to build page followings, give something free with an up sale, are attempting to sell something that can be seen as making the customer money or selling services with big margins (wedding based services comes to mind).
patd 15y ago
If you are logged on Facebook, never go on the website but still see the like-button that are scattered all around the web, do you count as an "monthly active user" ?
- pork 15y ago
  No. A simple search of their site will yield that information to you. It's people who log into the site, either mobile or web.
- alastair 15y ago
  "We define a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, or took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party website that is integrated with Facebook."
gggrgraham 15y ago
The Letter from mark has to be the coolest part. http://theairspace.net/commentary/letter-mark/ http://theairspace.net/commentary/letter-mark/ The Hacker Way has grown up and lambasted Wall St.
ig1 15y ago
Reading this document makes me think Facebook don't know what's happening inside their own company. Facebook from all behavioural indications have been focused on maximizing short-term spend per advertiser rather than the long term revenue per user. Yet that doesn't seem to be reflected at all in their filing.
- ig1 15y ago
  If you disagree with this statement I'd suggest you comment explaining why rather than just down-voting. Speaking as someone who bought over 35 million ads on Facebook last year, it's pretty evident that there's a mismatch between what Facebook are doing in practice and their view of what they're doing as portrayed by their SEC filing.
  - whatusername 15y ago
    Rather than complaining about down-votes -- it would be awesome for you (who having bought a ton of FB ads knows that market really really well) to explain and justify your statement. Can you give us some examples of their short-term thinking?
    - ig1 15y ago
      It's pretty well known in the industry, for example they've long ignored requests for basic features (day-parting, A/B testing) that would improve conversion rates for advertisers because they would result in a short-term drop in advertiser spending even though making Facebook an effective advertising platform would be a better long-term solution (revenue wise).
      - whatusername 15y ago
        Thanks.
alain94040 15y ago
Interesting salary history: 100% raise over 2 years. Molly Graham, the daughter of Donald E. Graham, a member of our board of directors, is employed by us. During 2009, 2010, and 2011, Ms. Graham had total cash compensation, including base salary, bonus and other compensation, of $98,058, $133,620, and $189,168.
- meric 15y ago
  I would think that is a fair compensation considering Facebook doubled its profits over that time also.
  - gwern 15y ago
    I doubt she was responsible for the doubling of profits. (And what of all the other employees...)
    - corin_ 15y ago
      If you take a simplistic view of it, without assigning value to each person, doubling a person's salary is, while doubling profits, giving a raise that fits the success of the company, not a raise that says she played more or less than an average role within the company.
- bibinou 15y ago
  She changed jobs in April 2010, arguably with more responsabilities : http://www.linkedin.com/pub/molly-graham/6/658/a50 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/molly-graham/6/658/a50
collypops 15y ago
"Effective January 1, 2013, Mr. Zuckerberg’s annual base salary will be reduced to $1." In the business world, we can now call this "Doing a Jobs".
- apaprocki 15y ago
  Or a Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Mike Bloomberg.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary
- ryanwaggoner 15y ago
  I found this interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary
blantonl 15y ago
Per the S-1 filing, Facebook did $1 billion dollars in net revenue in 2011. A valuation of $80-$100 billion dollars after the IPO would mean Facebook would be trading at 80 to 100x earnings. Facebook is going to need to see some serious growth to continue to command a PE ratio like that long term. Serious Growth
- ldayley 15y ago
  Huge P/E ratio hasn't seemed to hurt shares of Salesforce.com too much.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  Alpha Centauri is an untapped market.
  - LearnYouALisp 15y ago
    Think of all the arcane technology to recover from the ruins!
newguy0 15y ago
Looks like members of the exec team (COO, CTO, etc.) will each be worth 100MM post IPO Wonder what amt of RSUs the rank-and-file are getting? Also, it'll be interesting to see how the culture changes when a good % of the populace are millionaires
sek 15y ago
Wow look at site 54, they pushed their revenue this year to a billion in December. How are they doing this?
- dcaranda 15y ago
  4th quarter, and December in particular, are usually huge in advertising cause of the holiday shopping season.
ChrisNorstrom 15y ago
I wonder how many employees are going to ditch the company after it goes public. They might have stuck around just for the IPO so they can hit big, take the money, leave, and start their own companies.
- tdenkinger 15y ago
  They won't be able to exercise their vested options for several months (usually six, as I recall). And many won't have vested 100% yet. That keeps people around.
ajays 15y ago
Facebook's revenue will eventually shift from display advertising to data selling. There will come a time when no display campaign will run without input from Facebook. Before any impression on any online media, advertisers will make a query to Facebook to find out which of the ads should be shown to this user. And Facebook will charge a small fee for each such query.
Johngibb 15y ago
If they filed for an IPO today, how long will it be until their shares are actually available to an average investor?
- mikejestes 15y ago
  Sounds like 2nd quarter, maybe May.
  - dcaranda 15y ago
    Technically, just cause you file doesn't necessarily mean you IPO. Depends how their roadshow goes. But yeah - prolly May
miles_matthias 15y ago
I don't disagree that they have a good culture there, but I don't think they've reached a good balance between done and perfect yet. Loads of Facebook is riddled with bugs and at times, rendered totally unusable. The only reason they're able to get away with such an imbalance is that their product taps into the primal urge to be connected with other people, so much so that their users will overcome all odds to get on Facebook and connect with their friends. And for that, I don't much care for Facebook. Make a great service, not crap built to take advantage of a human instinct.
swlkr 15y ago
I agree with what people say about a Facebook phone. They might offer a smartphone for a heavily subsidized price and/or a feature phone for free. They might even offer free unlimited data, the catch for either model (and the data) is the that you log in with Facebook first thing, and maybe they'll restrict you to using only Facebook services, like messenger.
hessenwolf 15y ago
An adsense product from facebook would be really interesting, but I am not interested in adverstising on facebook.com. Do they already have this?
visegrip 15y ago
Filing a S1 when business is slowing down. Genius! Subscriber rates have fallen and the future is filled with uncertainty. Let's go Public! Google SYWP changing the game of advertising. Panic! Exit strategy for investors to monetize their investments. Priceless!
hc8217 15y ago
I just read through the entire S-1 before reading anything in the media about it. I liveblogged the tidbits I found interesting: http://hc8217.tumblr.com/ http://hc8217.tumblr.com/
shaggy 15y ago
I really wish everyone would stop talking about mobile access like it's this entirely new thing that's never been done before. Using facebook from a mobile device is absolutely, 100%, without room for debate using "the web". Sure it's a mobile device, but it's still HTTP and it's still a mobile browser based app. Just because it's not a "desktop" version of a browser does not mean the access isn't "web".
- politician 15y ago
  The issue with mobile is the limited screen real estate and the impact that has on being able to place ads. The mobile environment is different from the desktop environment, so it makes sense to distinguish the two. But you're right, calling the later "web" is a misnomer.
dcaranda 15y ago
I put together a really quick valuation multiples analysis based on financial info from the S-1: https://twitter.com/#!/daranda/status/164854828957310978/photo/1/large https://twitter.com/#!/daranda/status/164854828957310978/pho... Disclaimer: This analysis is flawed - Using multiples is not a perfect method to understand the valuation of a business. It's one of many. It's a proxy. It's quick. - This chart uses 2011 financial data. Facebook is growing fast - their multiples would come down significantly if we used 2012 projections - which we don't have. If I had more than 10 minutes on this - I would use 2nd half of 2011 or Q4 2011 as a run rate. Quick Thoughts (Not Conclusions): - In Ben Horowitz's argument against the bubble - he says the valuations they were seeing at AH for large private tech companies (like facebook) is in line with large public tech companies (google). So just looking at the data quickly, I was disappointed that FB appeared to have higher multiples (his blog post: http://bhorowitz.com/2011/03/24/bubble-trouble-i-don%E2%80%99t-think-so/ http://bhorowitz.com/2011/03/24/bubble-trouble-i-don%E2%80%9...) - DAYAM FB has a crazy operating margin - And they're getting better at monetizing each user. User growth was 40% from end of 2010 to end of 2011, while revenue grew 80% (http://allthingsd.com/20120201/facebook-has-845-million-users/ http://allthingsd.com/20120201/facebook-has-845-million-user...)

413 points by hornokplease 15y ago

rplnt 15y ago

The site is really slow for me, maybe it's getting overloaded or ... something else. Either way, could someone post a summary of the filing? If I remember correctly there should be some pretty interesting figures; revenue, profit and so on.

hornokplease 15y ago
Here's a screencap of the summary financial data chart: http://i.imgur.com/c5pHt.png http://i.imgur.com/c5pHt.png
- samstave 15y ago
  Wow, thats pretty interesting; the earnings per share. I would love to see that compared to users. Especially if new users flattened out somewhat compared to increasing revenues. I am not sure, but I dont think that FB userbase went up by 4.5x in the same period as did revenues. That means they are getting far better at monetizing the users/advertisers are willing to spend far more to advert to the users, than before.

portman 15y ago

EDGAR keeps timing out for me, anyone know of a mirror?

bcn 15y ago
http://www.scribd.com/doc/80163402/Facebook-S-1 http://www.scribd.com/doc/80163402/Facebook-S-1

dm8 15y ago

Wow.. $3.7 billion in revenues in 2011; $1 billion in profits. Out of curiosity, what were GOOG's revenue/profit numbers when they filed for IPO?

cwe 15y ago
In their S1, GOOG reported net income of $106M on $962M revenue. src: https://twitter.com/#!/goldman/status/164830894685818880 https://twitter.com/#!/goldman/status/164830894685818880
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
gphil 15y ago
Not as good. See here: http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504073639/ds1.htm#toc16167_11 http://sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/00011931250407363...
- nextparadigms 15y ago
  Google filed for IPO earlier in the company's life, though. Year per year, Google made more than Facebook.
RobPfeifer 15y ago
They're here: <a href="http://imgur.com/5YeNq><img http://imgur.com/5YeNq><img src="http://i.imgur.com/5YeNq.gif http://i.imgur.com/5YeNq.gif title="Hosted by imgur.com" alt="" /></a> I saved this when I came across it a while back. Also, they had $961mm in net income the year they went out
mun2mun 15y ago
Looks like jacquesm lost a bet http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=689789 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=689789 :).
- swalsh 15y ago
  To be fair, he said multiple billion in profit not revenue. Still has some ways to go.
  - 15y ago

zach 15y ago

Direct link to the text of the S-1: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034517/d287954ds1.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001193125120...

bradleyjg 15y ago

They are doing a dual class offering. The class B shares (i.e. those held by Zuckerberg and other insiders) are going to have ten times the voting rights as the class A shares. I wouldn't by into such an ownership structure, though to be fair, google has such a structure and those that bought that at IPO have done very well so far. From the risks section: As a result of voting agreements with certain stockholders, together with the shares he holds, Mark Zuckerberg, our founder, Chairman, and CEO, will be able to exercise voting rights with respect to an aggregate of XX shares of common stock, representing a majority of the voting power of our outstanding capital stock following our initial public offering. As a result, Mr. Zuckerberg has the ability to control the outcome of matters submitted to our stockholders for approval, including the election of directors and any merger, consolidation, or sale of all or substantially all of our assets. In addition, Mr. Zuckerberg has the ability to control the management and affairs of our company as a result of his position as our CEO and his ability to control the election of our directors. Additionally, in the event that Mr. Zuckerberg controls our company at the time of his death, control may be transferred to a person or entity that he designates as his successor. As a board member and officer, Mr. Zuckerberg owes a fiduciary duty to our stockholders and must act in good faith in a manner he reasonably believes to be in the best interests of our stockholders. As a stockholder, even a controlling stockholder, Mr. Zuckerberg is entitled to vote his shares, and shares over which he has voting control as a result of voting agreements, in his own interests, which may not always be in the interests of our stockholders generally.

tlrobinson 15y ago
How many other public companies have a single stockholder with majority voting power?
- jmackinn 15y ago
  Frank Stronach, of Magna International, held a voting majority for over 30 years, despite actually owning a minority share of the company.
nknight 15y ago
> I wouldn't by into such an ownership structure I would under some circumstances, but there are absolutely no circumstances under which I would be prepared to invest in a company where one person has majority voting power. At least with Google, no single person's psychotic break can bring down the company.

apike 15y ago

It turns out that Zynga only accounts for 12% of their revenue. "In 2011, Zynga accounted for approximately 12% of our revenue, which amount was comprised of revenue derived from payments processing fees related to Zynga’s sales of virtual goods and from direct advertising purchased by Zynga. Additionally, Zynga’s apps generate a significant number of pages on which we display ads from other advertisers." It appears they would still be profitable without Zynga.

veyron 15y ago
"Zynga’s apps generate a significant number of pages on which we display ads from other advertisers" Are those ads counted toward the 12% statistic?
- anonymoushn 15y ago
  Based on my reading of the quote, the 12% does not include ads displayed on pages generated by Zynga apps.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- brd 15y ago
  85% of revenue is from advertising. So either Zynga controls 80% of all non advertising revenue (aka the remaining 15%) or that 12% figure includes advertisements served on Zynga pages. Is it reasonable to conclude that Zynga constitutes 80% of FB's credit ecosystem?
  - veyron 15y ago
    Sadly the answer is yes (it is reasonable to assume 80% of FB's credit ecosystem targets Zynga assets). Check out Zynga's S-1 (since, thanks to the deal, most of zynga's revenue comes through FB credits, and those numbers will have been discounted because of FB's cut)
  - jim-greer 15y ago
    No, the 12% includes advertisements Zynga buys from Facebook, but not ads that appear on their pages. "In 2011, Zynga accounted for approximately 12% of our revenue, which amount was comprised of revenue derived from payments processing fees related to Zynga’s sales of virtual goods and from direct advertising purchased by Zynga. Additionally, Zynga’s apps generate a significant number of pages on which we display ads from other advertisers."

CWIZO 15y ago

As someone that lives in EU (as in, not in USA) and has no clue about stock market: what would be the easiest way for me to get a couple of hundred € worth of stocks in FB? Is that even possible?

Tichy 15y ago
I also don't really have a clue, but I think if you have a "trading depot" with some bank, they will offer you several stock exchanges to trade on. So you could pick some US stock exchange and buy the shares there.
Mvandenbergh 15y ago
Probably not, no. Most IPO shares are sold to large clients of brokerages. One of the inducements that large investment banks offer independent brokerages who use their services is letting them offer hot IPO stocks to some of their major customers.
hkolk 15y ago
Probably best to find a local broker that is on nasdaq. In the Netherlands, I would advise Binck or something similar. I personally have my companies stock in eTrade, but that is because that is how I received it :) It can be tricky to get into the IPO though. Don't know the details on those rules.
spinchange 15y ago
You're not going to get in on the IPO price. That's for the banks who are selling to their very top-tier clients before it even starts trading on the exchange, basically. Look into what is involved in buying stock in any American company from the EU. If you're still interested, you can pick up a few shares after it's trading on the exchanges.
patd 15y ago
You need to buy them on the day they IPO. You will not be able to buy it at the IPO price but at the price of the first minute of trading. On top of that, "a couple of hundred €" is probably not enough money. The fees to buy stocks on the Nasdaq is usually in the tens of euro. You'll probably have between 10 and 50 euros of fees at the cheaper online trading platforms. You can also call your traditional bank to buy the stocks but the fees would probably be higher.

deleted 15y ago

[deleted]

CWIZO 15y ago
At least give context next time (I had to google for it): http://www.theonion.com/articles/facebook-to-launch-ipo,27234/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/facebook-to-launch-ipo,2723... edit: downvoter ... I just wanted to provide context for others so they wouldn't wonder what this is all about. I agree that this comment (parent) does not belong here ...

olivercameron 15y ago

Curiously, Sean Parker appears to not be on the top shareholders list[1], despite previously having a large %. Did he sell all of it on SecondMarket? 1. http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebooks-s-1-and-the-largest-shareholders-who-owns-what/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebooks-s-1-and-the-large...

trotsky 15y ago
While I don't know the specifics, it is very common for insiders to sell shares to new investors during later rounds. If I remember correctly, most of last year's goldman deal was from existing shareholders and not the company itself. So there is also a lot of opportunity to unload shares without using the formal markets as long as management is cooperative.
- jpdoctor 15y ago
  > it is very common for insiders to sell shares to new investors during later rounds. Since when? Way back in the dark ages (2003), it was seen as a lack of faith in the company if the insiders were selling. It is the paradox of the sale: If you think the stock is about to double or triple, why would you part with any of it? Sensible folks would go get a loan, esp with interest rates so low.
  - trotsky 15y ago
    Since SOX? A perspective I've heard echoed by a few venture firms is that allowing insiders to sell a portion of the shares allows a bit of the pressure to come off and lets them focus on longer term value instead of wanting to rush into a liquidity event. Could be BS, who knows, but it's certainly happening.
    - georgemcbay 15y ago
      Seems completely reasonable to me. A bird in the hand is still worth two in the bush, even if you're pretty sure you can get the two (or four) in the bush later. Having been involved in a few startups where my equity was eventually valued at nothing, I'd certainly jump at the chance to sell some percentage of a future company I was involved with for real cash money even if I was pretty certain the stock might be worth more later.

sp332 15y ago

So what % of the company are they selling off for $5 Billion? I'm wondering what they're claiming the whole company to be worth.

trotsky 15y ago
All of those numbers will be preliminary, they won't actually decide on number of shares offered and offering price (which determines their claimed valuation) until just before the offering. It depends on market conditions and what the large institutions say they're willing to pay.

dxbydt 15y ago

It looks like the accountant put in the perfect round figure of 1000 million for 2011 Net Income& then backed out all the other entries :) I used to do exactly that in my Accountancy 101 exams - Q.write the income statement for Acme Corp. What do you want Net Income to be ? XXX $. That means, TCO must be XXX - yyy, R&D must be XXX - zzz, and similarly back out everything else. Not saying they actually did that, just that seeing such perfectly round numbers reminded me of those exam problems.

chintan 15y ago

<Interesting/> "Mobile" appears as risk factor in 2 instances. - Growth in use of Facebook through our mobile products, where we do not currently display ads, as a substitute for use on personal computers may negatively affect our revenue and financial results; - Facebook user growth and engagement on mobile devices depend upon effective operation with mobile operating systems, networks, and standards that we do not control;

ypcx 15y ago
They will be able to exert any control they want on the Windows Phone through Microsoft. Also, what prevents them from showing ads in mobile apps? They did a great work locking everyone out of functionality that would enable direct FB access, app developers can only access FB as an FB app, so no ad-less competition there.

Sthorpe 15y ago

"In the first quarter of 2012, our compensation committee discussed and approved a request by our CEO to reduce his base salary to $1 per year, effective January 1, 2013." Awesome.

craigbellot 15y ago
I never understood why management sometimes take $1 salary. Doesn't the IRS see that as non reasonable compensation?
- wmf 15y ago
  CEOs are still paying taxes on their non-salary compensation.
  - craigbellot 15y ago
    So what exactly is the purpose or benefit?
    - akkartik 15y ago
      PR.
    - jsb 15y ago
      Maybe to pay homage to Steve Jobs? Otherwise, I dunno.
    - mgse 15y ago
      Less tax impact. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary
    - dekz 15y ago
      Probably to receive stock options in compensation. Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Eric Schmidt have also done the same. They seem to be exempt from payroll taxes in the United Sates. [1]: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312506010016/d8k.htm http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/0001193125060...

taylorwc 15y ago

3.711B in revenue and 3,200 employees at the end of 2011. That puts their revenue/employee numbers only slightly lower than Apple & Google, but beats Amazon. Impressive.

moxiemk1 15y ago

$1 Billion in profit => $1/(user year) in profit for 2011, correct? That's pretty darn good money, but not a huge amount more room for user-growth. They'll grow by having new businesses/making current ones more profitable. New business would have to be monetizable (eventually, at least), current businesses would either have to convert better or become less costly to run. Facebook is full of some smart cookies - it'll be interesting to see how they accomplish those paths.

brd 15y ago
I was thinking the same thing. Considering they have ~42% of all users (assuming the billion internet user estimate) there is only so much growth available from relying on their current model of acquiring users and serving ads to them. I would imagine a next logical step would be to expand its ad network beyond facebook (i.e. serve facebook ads outside of facebook itself), it would allow for a significant jump in growth potential while staying close to their core competency.

Toddward 15y ago

"We had 845 million monthly active users (MAUs) as of December 31, 2011." That blows some estimates out of the water.

mwytock 15y ago

Key information on revenue is on page 50. 85% of revenue comes from ads, which grew 69% Y/Y mostly driven by user growth (39% Y/Y) and showing a bunch more ads starting Q4 2010: 2011 Compared to 2010. Revenue in 2011 increased $1,737 million, or 88% compared to 2010. The increase was due primarily to a 69% increase in advertising revenue to $3,154 million. Advertising revenue grew due to a 42% increase in thenumber of ads delivered and an 18% increase in the average price per ad delivered. The increase in ads delivered was driven primarily by user growth. The number of ads delivered was also affected by many other factors including product changes that significantly increased the number of ads on many Facebook pages beginning in the fourth quarter of 2010, partially offset byan increase in usage of our mobile products, where we do not show ads, and by various product changes implemented in 2011that in aggregate modestly reduced the number of ads on certain pages. The increase in average price per ad delivered was affected by factors including improvements in our ability to deliver more relevant ads to users and product changes that contributed to higher user interaction with the ads by increasing their relative prominence.

jcampbell1 15y ago
The key information is on page 54-55: Why the massive jump in Q4 2011 revenue over Q3? It looks like there is a seasonality factor, but their explanation only covers Q4 2010, to Q4 2011. This is going to be a super volatile stock. If there Q1 2012 revenue is flat QoQ, this is probably a $50B company, if it is up 15%, then this is probably a $100B company.
jcampbell1 15y ago
The key information is on page 54-55: Why the massive jump in Q4 2011 revenue over Q3? It looks like there is a seasonality factor, but their explanation only covers Q4 2010, to Q4 2011. This is going to be a super volatile stock. If the Q1 2012 revenue is flat QoQ, this is probably a $50B company, if it is up 15%, then this is probably a $100B company.
- mwytock 15y ago
  I was actually most curious to see if they had developed a source of revenue other than ads. It seems like the answer to that is mostly no, although they are working on payments. I agree that ads revenue growth will be key for them in the short term. The Q4 2011 vs 2010 growth was 44% and it seems like perhaps the growth rate is slowing down. Of course they're not yet showing ads on mobile..

omarish 15y ago

I'm curious as to what facebook did to generate $382k of revenue in 2004. Seems like a great start for a company of their size at the time. IIRC, they didn't turn on ads for a while afterwards. Link: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000119312512034517/g287954g71g62.jpg http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/0001193125120...

scottkrager 15y ago
Not sure about 2004 but I bought an ad on facebook in 2005. It was for a specific university and that was about the extent of the targeting if I remember correctly...

revorad 15y ago

Zuckerberg's letter is really fantastic -http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebook-ipo-letter/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/01/facebook-ipo-letter/. I'm really proud of him for clearly and loudly representing the hacker way when the whole world is watching.

ColdAsIce 15y ago
What makes Zuckerberg a hacker?
- pja 15y ago
  So what if he isn't? He still gets the props for writing so clearly about his preference for that approach to product development. I suspect it's also a shout out to future potential employees that he doesn't intend FB to change focus or style as a consequence of going public.
- mpeg 15y ago
  he made a website used by 800 million people? You might not necessarily agree with the extent the word "hacker" is applied to nowadays, but considering you are in a site called "hacker news" you probably should

lyime 15y ago

A small tidbit. FB paid Zuck $783,529 (3) in "other" compensation from his base 500k salary. (3) The fine print.... The amount reported represent approximately $692,679 for costs related to personal use of aircraft chartered in connection with his comprehensive security program and on which family and friends flew during 2011. Like a boss.

sriramk 15y ago
For someone worth close to $30b, compromising on things like flying and security seems silly. Amazed they aren't spending more.
- phillmv 15y ago
  Eeeeeh, I think it's one of those executive privilege things. 1) If he's already flying domestically and first class, that shaves what? An hour? Please. 2) The company doesn't have to charter a jet to fly friends and family. So… let's just call it for the luxury that it is. They're not strapped for cash, after all. (Besides, just how liquid is Mark Zuckerberg? He's only a billionaire on paper, right?)
- hga 15y ago
  Indeed. One should also remember that in the infinite wisdom of the Congress and whoever was President at the time, any cash salary over $1 million gets an extra tax on top of normal income taxes. Better to pay for his security in before tax dollars.

newhouseb 15y ago

One of the interesting gems in this filing is at the very end, it details stock grants for acquisitions so you can infer the running rate of talent acquisitions. So for example, "On February 28, 2011, we issued 681,357 shares of our Class A common stock as consideration to a company in connection with our purchase of certain assets from the company." You can cross reference these with news and correlate approximate acquisition cost based on the estimate value of price per share assuming, say, a valuation of $100 billion. So I'm guessing that the company I mentioned is Octazen and assuming a $100 billion valuation (~$50 per share), this comes out to about $35 million (assuming an entirely stock acquisition - note that Facebook spent, for example, $20 million aggregate in cash on acquisitions in 2010).

jonnathanson 15y ago

Facebook is heavily (heavily!) reliant on display advertising, all of which is a) challenged by the switch of its userbase to mobile, and b) going to hit critical mass eventually. No matter how smart you make display advertising, there's still a cap on how much you can foist onto users before you piss them off. IMO, Facebook's future depends on two things: 1) Figuring out how to serve up contextually relevant ads on mobile platforms in a nonintrusive and, ideally, useful way. 2) Figuring out how to serve up contextually relevant ads outside of Facebook, to Facebook Connect-backended partner sites and apps. (Sort of like an AdSense/AdWords hybrid, but based on very intelligent user-interest and browsing data). I'm betting on #2's being the runaway breadwinner for Facebook in the long run. The longterm strategy seems to be to reduce reliance/dependence on Facebook.com in favor of Facebook Connect.

ig1 15y ago
#2 doesn't require them to do anything special, Facebook ads are driven off user demographics and not page context.
- mahmud 15y ago
  Facebook delivered us 200k uniques. Zero conversions. Google brings us a few hundred a day, consisten conversion. Apparel retail. FWIW. As far as I'm concerned FB traffic is junk. Comes handy for load-testing though.
  - pork 15y ago
    Zero conversions from 200k uniques? Are you sure your conversion tracking isn't broken?
  - robryan 15y ago
    Facebook is horrible for any kind of direct sale, the ads I see are rarely trying to sell anything directly. More people are trying to build page followings, give something free with an up sale, are attempting to sell something that can be seen as making the customer money or selling services with big margins (wedding based services comes to mind).

patd 15y ago

If you are logged on Facebook, never go on the website but still see the like-button that are scattered all around the web, do you count as an "monthly active user" ?

pork 15y ago
No. A simple search of their site will yield that information to you. It's people who log into the site, either mobile or web.
alastair 15y ago
"We define a monthly active user as a registered Facebook user who logged in and visited Facebook through our website or a mobile device, or took an action to share content or activity with his or her Facebook friends or connections via a third-party website that is integrated with Facebook."

gggrgraham 15y ago

The Letter from mark has to be the coolest part. http://theairspace.net/commentary/letter-mark/ http://theairspace.net/commentary/letter-mark/ The Hacker Way has grown up and lambasted Wall St.

ig1 15y ago

Reading this document makes me think Facebook don't know what's happening inside their own company. Facebook from all behavioural indications have been focused on maximizing short-term spend per advertiser rather than the long term revenue per user. Yet that doesn't seem to be reflected at all in their filing.

ig1 15y ago
If you disagree with this statement I'd suggest you comment explaining why rather than just down-voting. Speaking as someone who bought over 35 million ads on Facebook last year, it's pretty evident that there's a mismatch between what Facebook are doing in practice and their view of what they're doing as portrayed by their SEC filing.
- whatusername 15y ago
  Rather than complaining about down-votes -- it would be awesome for you (who having bought a ton of FB ads knows that market really really well) to explain and justify your statement. Can you give us some examples of their short-term thinking?
  - ig1 15y ago
    It's pretty well known in the industry, for example they've long ignored requests for basic features (day-parting, A/B testing) that would improve conversion rates for advertisers because they would result in a short-term drop in advertiser spending even though making Facebook an effective advertising platform would be a better long-term solution (revenue wise).
    - whatusername 15y ago
      Thanks.

alain94040 15y ago

Interesting salary history: 100% raise over 2 years. Molly Graham, the daughter of Donald E. Graham, a member of our board of directors, is employed by us. During 2009, 2010, and 2011, Ms. Graham had total cash compensation, including base salary, bonus and other compensation, of $98,058, $133,620, and $189,168.

meric 15y ago
I would think that is a fair compensation considering Facebook doubled its profits over that time also.
- gwern 15y ago
  I doubt she was responsible for the doubling of profits. (And what of all the other employees...)
  - corin_ 15y ago
    If you take a simplistic view of it, without assigning value to each person, doubling a person's salary is, while doubling profits, giving a raise that fits the success of the company, not a raise that says she played more or less than an average role within the company.
bibinou 15y ago
She changed jobs in April 2010, arguably with more responsabilities : http://www.linkedin.com/pub/molly-graham/6/658/a50 http://www.linkedin.com/pub/molly-graham/6/658/a50

collypops 15y ago

"Effective January 1, 2013, Mr. Zuckerberg’s annual base salary will be reduced to $1." In the business world, we can now call this "Doing a Jobs".

apaprocki 15y ago
Or a Elon Musk, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Mike Bloomberg.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary
ryanwaggoner 15y ago
I found this interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-dollar_salary

blantonl 15y ago

Per the S-1 filing, Facebook did $1 billion dollars in net revenue in 2011. A valuation of $80-$100 billion dollars after the IPO would mean Facebook would be trading at 80 to 100x earnings. Facebook is going to need to see some serious growth to continue to command a PE ratio like that long term. Serious Growth

ldayley 15y ago
Huge P/E ratio hasn't seemed to hurt shares of Salesforce.com too much.
jacques_chester 15y ago
Alpha Centauri is an untapped market.
- LearnYouALisp 15y ago
  Think of all the arcane technology to recover from the ruins!

newguy0 15y ago

Looks like members of the exec team (COO, CTO, etc.) will each be worth 100MM post IPO Wonder what amt of RSUs the rank-and-file are getting? Also, it'll be interesting to see how the culture changes when a good % of the populace are millionaires

sek 15y ago

Wow look at site 54, they pushed their revenue this year to a billion in December. How are they doing this?

dcaranda 15y ago
4th quarter, and December in particular, are usually huge in advertising cause of the holiday shopping season.

ChrisNorstrom 15y ago

I wonder how many employees are going to ditch the company after it goes public. They might have stuck around just for the IPO so they can hit big, take the money, leave, and start their own companies.

tdenkinger 15y ago
They won't be able to exercise their vested options for several months (usually six, as I recall). And many won't have vested 100% yet. That keeps people around.

ajays 15y ago

Facebook's revenue will eventually shift from display advertising to data selling. There will come a time when no display campaign will run without input from Facebook. Before any impression on any online media, advertisers will make a query to Facebook to find out which of the ads should be shown to this user. And Facebook will charge a small fee for each such query.

Johngibb 15y ago

If they filed for an IPO today, how long will it be until their shares are actually available to an average investor?

mikejestes 15y ago
Sounds like 2nd quarter, maybe May.
- dcaranda 15y ago
  Technically, just cause you file doesn't necessarily mean you IPO. Depends how their roadshow goes. But yeah - prolly May

miles_matthias 15y ago

I don't disagree that they have a good culture there, but I don't think they've reached a good balance between done and perfect yet. Loads of Facebook is riddled with bugs and at times, rendered totally unusable. The only reason they're able to get away with such an imbalance is that their product taps into the primal urge to be connected with other people, so much so that their users will overcome all odds to get on Facebook and connect with their friends. And for that, I don't much care for Facebook. Make a great service, not crap built to take advantage of a human instinct.

swlkr 15y ago

I agree with what people say about a Facebook phone. They might offer a smartphone for a heavily subsidized price and/or a feature phone for free. They might even offer free unlimited data, the catch for either model (and the data) is the that you log in with Facebook first thing, and maybe they'll restrict you to using only Facebook services, like messenger.

hessenwolf 15y ago

An adsense product from facebook would be really interesting, but I am not interested in adverstising on facebook.com. Do they already have this?

visegrip 15y ago

Filing a S1 when business is slowing down. Genius! Subscriber rates have fallen and the future is filled with uncertainty. Let's go Public! Google SYWP changing the game of advertising. Panic! Exit strategy for investors to monetize their investments. Priceless!

hc8217 15y ago

I just read through the entire S-1 before reading anything in the media about it. I liveblogged the tidbits I found interesting: http://hc8217.tumblr.com/ http://hc8217.tumblr.com/

shaggy 15y ago

I really wish everyone would stop talking about mobile access like it's this entirely new thing that's never been done before. Using facebook from a mobile device is absolutely, 100%, without room for debate using "the web". Sure it's a mobile device, but it's still HTTP and it's still a mobile browser based app. Just because it's not a "desktop" version of a browser does not mean the access isn't "web".

politician 15y ago
The issue with mobile is the limited screen real estate and the impact that has on being able to place ads. The mobile environment is different from the desktop environment, so it makes sense to distinguish the two. But you're right, calling the later "web" is a misnomer.

dcaranda 15y ago

I put together a really quick valuation multiples analysis based on financial info from the S-1: https://twitter.com/#!/daranda/status/164854828957310978/photo/1/large https://twitter.com/#!/daranda/status/164854828957310978/pho... Disclaimer: This analysis is flawed - Using multiples is not a perfect method to understand the valuation of a business. It's one of many. It's a proxy. It's quick. - This chart uses 2011 financial data. Facebook is growing fast - their multiples would come down significantly if we used 2012 projections - which we don't have. If I had more than 10 minutes on this - I would use 2nd half of 2011 or Q4 2011 as a run rate. Quick Thoughts (Not Conclusions): - In Ben Horowitz's argument against the bubble - he says the valuations they were seeing at AH for large private tech companies (like facebook) is in line with large public tech companies (google). So just looking at the data quickly, I was disappointed that FB appeared to have higher multiples (his blog post: http://bhorowitz.com/2011/03/24/bubble-trouble-i-don%E2%80%99t-think-so/ http://bhorowitz.com/2011/03/24/bubble-trouble-i-don%E2%80%9...) - DAYAM FB has a crazy operating margin - And they're getting better at monetizing each user. User growth was 40% from end of 2010 to end of 2011, while revenue grew 80% (http://allthingsd.com/20120201/facebook-has-845-million-users/ http://allthingsd.com/20120201/facebook-has-845-million-user...)