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Facebook earnings beat; shares jump nearly 20%
- sharkweek 13y agoThose five shares I bought to be a part of internet history at the IPO are finally making a comeback
- Afforess 13y agoIf you had instead invested that money in a ETF that follows the S&P 500, you could have $2.109 in profits today. (Assuming $190 initial investment and S&P growth of 1.11% since May 20th)
- faramarz 13y agoAmazing! So they simply turn ads on for mobile and it makes over $200 million in a quarter. Jaw dropping!
- GoNB 13y agoAs someone who has clicked less than maybe 20 Internet/mobile ads in their life, thus clearly not party of the demographic companies target, I wonder what is wrong with my brain if the majority of people click on ads. (And probably spam mail too)
- Spearchucker 13y agoI use their mobile web site because the app automatically slurps up my contact list. When I scroll down on my news feed I have to be careful to avoid starting the swipe on an ad, because just touching an ad is a click. Touching a legit news feed item doesn't affect my swipe like that. The cynic in me wonders how many others are caught out like this.
- mikeswiss 13y agoI would guess a good amount :)
- nuclear_eclipse 13y agoDisclosure: I'm a Facebook employee working on something completely unrelated to ads, and I always use AdBlock on my desktop machines, but I will say this for our mobile advertisements: they can be genuinely useful. Just last week, I got an "offer" on my phone, from The Gap, for 25% off my next purchase. Claiming the offer didn't send any of my information to the gap, but it prompted me to shop there for pants when I normally would have gone elsewhere, and I actually ended up buying something. At 25% off, it cost less than or comparable to my normal shopping locations, so it was a win for me, and I bought something from The Gap that I otherwise wouldn't have, so it was a win for the advertiser. A far cry from the bad taste that online advertising usually leaves in my mouth.
- arkades 13y agoThat sounds to me like the argument people always provide in favor of targeted advertising. What distinction do you see between desktop and mobile that made the latter more useful for you?
- nuclear_eclipse 13y agoDesktop advertising has never before offered me a discount for having seen the advertisement; it's usually along the lines of "go look at this". By having a more tangible "carrot", if you will, I was much more receptive to the request for attention.
- bbgm 13y agoThe only ads I've ever clicked on (and actually ended up buying something from the App Store) are Facebook mobile ads. Just a couple of times but they were good ones.
- psbp 13y agoFacebook is not going away. They can turn on as many revenue streams as they want, and people will not leave.
- 1O0101ll100O 13y ago"AOL is here to stay." "Myspace is here to stay." "Facebook is not going away." "640K should be enough for anyone." The only certainty is change.
- freshfunk 13y agoArbitrary list? Why not use Google, Apple, Intel?
- cryowaffle 13y agoNot arbitrary... list to support his opinion of Facebook.
- psbp 13y agoIt's arbitrary because if we're going to assume that facebook is going away, we can just as easily assume that google, intel, etc will.
- unknownian 13y ago> Arbitrary list? Why not use Google, Apple, Intel? Hardware is much more important than software. Low level software (like operating systems) is much more important than web applications or services.
- mathgladiator 13y ago> The only certainty is change. Very true, which is why you should trade regularly. Strictly speaking, you can't win unless you play. In the long run, everything dies, so you have to ask yourself: is $FB a good bet for the next year? next 2 years? next five years?
- tokenadult 13y ago"Facebook's earnings excluding items came in at 19 cents per share versus 12 cents per share a year earlier." What were the excluded items? http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/excludingitems.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/excludingitems.asp
- JumpCrisscross 13y ago"Share-based compensation and related payroll tax expenses and income tax adjustments" are excluded from Facebook's non-GAAP income (loss) from operations measure. Facebook believes "varying available valuation methodologies, subjective assumptions and the variety of award types that companies can use under FASB ASC Topic 718" make it difficult for investors to gauge the "underlying performance" of "business operations" across time periods and companies. Excluded payroll tax expenses "are tied to the exercise or vesting of underlying equity awards," and to Facebook's stock price "at the time of vesting or exercise", which again may obfuscate "the operating performance". https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680113000016/ex991.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1326801/000132680113... FB's Q2 2013 Reported Results
- jcampbell1 13y agoMainly share based compensation. The GAAP rules are quirky about when you recognize the expense. Last year there was a $1B expense recognized for RSU's issued prior to 2011, which makes the GAAP numbers hard to compare.
- guscost 13y agoFrom a cursory glance at my phone, it seems that their P/E is somewhere around 576. I get that it's supposed to be a different paradigm and all that, but WHAT?!?!
- chatmasta 13y agoI made my first stock investment yesterday when I bought 20 shares! I must be a savant.
- fear91 13y agoI am waiting for Facebook to start their own AdSense alternative. There is a lot of money there.
- chatmasta 13y agoSeriously. This is the one reason I invested in Facebook stock. They are sitting on immense profit potential in the form of contextual advertising.
- mathgladiator 13y agoThis is why I regularly trade facebook. I easily have made 40% on their stock this year, and this boost is going to knock me over 50%
- Zimahl 13y agoI would guess it's because the context is relatively obscure whereas with Google it's not. Yes, they can uniquely identify you by your profile more than Google can, but for many who don't 'like' everything left and right (or like everything they come across) how would you determine what ads to show them? Just because my friends like something doesn't mean I will. And that's a wasted impression. Google on the other hand knows what you want - you're actively searching for it. It's pretty straightforward for those who want to serve ads to target what they want to target.
- sharkweek 13y agoI think you're confusing Adsense with Adwords -- Adsense is the offsite platform Google runs; if Facebook told websites using their non-existent off site platform what to advertise to you, that would very quickly turn into a fountain of money
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- andrewla 13y agoFinancial reporting is the absolute worst. Why say something like "estimates called for the social media giant to post earnings of 14 cents per share on revenue of $1.62 billion". Comparing the per-share number to the total revenue tells us next to nothing. Interpretation of the facts aside, they should at least report the relevant facts. Going to the primary source tells us that the numbers are $333M income on $1.813B of revenue, and the same quarter last year was a ($157M) loss on $1.184B of revenue. So revenue increased by ~$629M, and income increased by ~$490M.
- minimax 13y agoThere is a lot of bad financial reporting out there, but this isn't it. They aren't "comparing the per-share number to the total revenue." They are comparing the current quarter's EPS to the EPS for the same quarter a year ago and to the consensus expected EPS. The difference between the expected EPS and the actual EPS accounts for the jump in share price. EPS is just a way of normalizing earnings on a per share basis, kind of like how we quote the price per share (about $31 right now) rather than the total market cap.
- jonmc12 13y agoMobile push notifications? I suspect at least one technique that is helping with mobile engagement is the aggressive push notification strategy they have deployed in last 3 months. Its not just when someone mentions you, but even random wall posts from friends will send me an alert 1-2 times per week (http://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s4/293018-facebook-app-notifications-about-friends-status-updates-friends-not-close-friends-list.html http://forums.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s4/293018-fa...) At first I tapped on every one of these and landed in FB. After a few weeks, I realized something was off (or FB was just trying to trick me into thinking a wall post was relevant). Anyhow, its a interesting/shady tactic to re-engage passive FB users, possibly one of several strategies that are getting them results on mobile. Here is how to turn off push notifications - https://www.facebook.com/help/103859036372845 https://www.facebook.com/help/103859036372845 - I'm sure most FB users can not figure this out.
- chipsy 13y agoJoking with friends last night: "Facebook Liked your status." I've held the opinion that FB is poised for major user erosion, as a consequence I took a short position in the stock some months ago. However, since they've entered a phase where they're aggressively monetizing, I'm probably going to get out on the next pullback. I still think the conditions are right, but there's also no catalyst event on the horizon.
- nonchalance 13y agoShorting FB, especially when many analysts have a bearish view, is dangerous. The easy money was to be made in shorting at the IPO. The "catalyst" you are looking for is a real challenger to FB, which will come one day but most likely not until late 2014
- analyst74 13y ago"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent." - John Keynes That's especially true with shorting positions.
- kumarm 13y ago
- icedchai 13y agoWow. I'm at break even. Almost.
- dbg31415 13y agoHooray for annoying stupid fuckign ads all over Facebook.
- crapshoot101 13y agoI bought at ~21 blended; I'm feeling good right now, but see this as a real long term bet. FB's position is so stratospheric that the opportunities to monetize are nearly endless; the rub is going to be in picking the right paths, not the lack of paths.
- loganfrederick 13y agoIt really should be noted that no company with Facebook's P/E ratio has maintained that level for a long term. Facebook is still so overvalued that it will certainly come down from where it is now. If it doesn't, it would be the first company to do so. Even if it were to increase it's earnings, just a quick glance at Google Finance shows it's P/E 2,231. Regardless of other financials, that ratio is so off the wall that it could not be justified without an unprecedented amount of earnings growth. Making the claim that Facebook is the greatest company in the history of public companies is a stretch. [1] Cliff Asness of AQR's "Bubble Logic": http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=240371 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=240371
- tanzam75 13y ago> Even if it were to increase it's earnings, just a quick glance at Google Finance shows it's P/E 2,231. Google Finance has not recalculated the ratios yet. At present, Facebook is trading around 100x earnings.
- junto 13y agoThis is slightly off topic, but can someone explain this to me. I'm looking at the Google Fiance page for FB: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AFB https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AFB There I can see that the price is indeed up, but this is "pre-market": Pre-market: 31.10 +4.59 (17.31%) Jul 25, 5:29AM EDT Can someone explain to me how this pre-market works in the background? Is is an summation of an actual work queue of orders that are waiting to be placed once the market opens? I'm really interested how this works from the general technical perspective.