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16B? That's a B, people. While there are a lot of whatsapp users (and people have to pay to use it), wow, that's still a lot of money! How can they justify reve

by yeukhon 13y ago

16B? That's a B, people. While there are a lot of whatsapp users (and people have to pay to use it), wow, that's still a lot of money! How can they justify revenue that way? How can any company ever consider such acquisition? I don't even think Google can even make 16B like this. See this discussion: http://www.quora.com/WhatsApp-Messenger/How-much-revenue-is-WhatsApp-generating http://www.quora.com/WhatsApp-Messenger/How-much-revenue-is-... $20M net revenue, at most, right? With future expansion and side commercial services, I make $1B per year, fine. But that's after tax. So WhatsApp must make A LOT more than $1B. I really don't see anything else. But that's only when WhatsApp can continue to grow and actually gain that much of commercial income. Someone who have dealt with acquisition tells me how 16B is the right number. I would pay $5B just because WhatsApp is well-established.

ilteris 13y ago
Facebook is trying to own mobile, period. That's all that matters to them and they are doing whatever they can to do it now, when it is still relatively early.
discardorama 13y ago
Whatsapp charges $1/year IIRC. So, with 400MM users, you can expect ~$400MM/year revenue?
- pyrrhotech 13y ago
  AFAIK that's only the plan. right now they have very little if any revenue. People use Whatsapp because they are too poor to afford text messaging. My guess is that lots will leave even at 1 USD per year
  - paraboul 13y ago
    Too poor? No. User experience, group messaging, fast picture upload.
- yeukhon 13y ago
  There are 450M not 450MM. What is the double MM doing there? Sure but then minus the operation cost, tax, etc. You get down to very little. I don't dispute FB can turn it into a revenue machine by "inventing" a new way of looking at mobile and mobile messaging, but at this stage I am afraid the revenue that I read from Quora doesn't justify a 19B total acquisition. The price is too high; Twitter is about 40B ~ 50B (http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/01/03/twitter-near-70-valued-at-38-billion-or-49-billion/ http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/01/03/twitter-near-70-va...). So WhatsApp is at least 1/3 to 1/2 of Twitter, depending on how you look at it. And we probably can agree Twitter, FB are all about # of users; unlike Google which makes 60B revenue in 2013, Google has a real revenue model + user base. If you sell Google for $100B I won't even complain and I probably think that's a big bargain. (http://qz.com/137191/googles-record-valuation-is-still-130-billion-short-of-apples/ http://qz.com/137191/googles-record-valuation-is-still-130-b...)
pawelk 13y ago
> 16B? That's a B, people. I wanted to put the number into perspective to wrap my head around it and it seems that $19B (I've added the $3B RSUs) was the public healthcare budget for 2013 in my country of almost 40 milion citizens.

by yeukhon 13y ago

ilteris 13y ago

Facebook is trying to own mobile, period. That's all that matters to them and they are doing whatever they can to do it now, when it is still relatively early.

discardorama 13y ago

Whatsapp charges $1/year IIRC. So, with 400MM users, you can expect ~$400MM/year revenue?

pyrrhotech 13y ago
AFAIK that's only the plan. right now they have very little if any revenue. People use Whatsapp because they are too poor to afford text messaging. My guess is that lots will leave even at 1 USD per year
- paraboul 13y ago
  Too poor? No. User experience, group messaging, fast picture upload.
yeukhon 13y ago
There are 450M not 450MM. What is the double MM doing there? Sure but then minus the operation cost, tax, etc. You get down to very little. I don't dispute FB can turn it into a revenue machine by "inventing" a new way of looking at mobile and mobile messaging, but at this stage I am afraid the revenue that I read from Quora doesn't justify a 19B total acquisition. The price is too high; Twitter is about 40B ~ 50B (http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/01/03/twitter-near-70-valued-at-38-billion-or-49-billion/ http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/01/03/twitter-near-70-va...). So WhatsApp is at least 1/3 to 1/2 of Twitter, depending on how you look at it. And we probably can agree Twitter, FB are all about # of users; unlike Google which makes 60B revenue in 2013, Google has a real revenue model + user base. If you sell Google for $100B I won't even complain and I probably think that's a big bargain. (http://qz.com/137191/googles-record-valuation-is-still-130-billion-short-of-apples/ http://qz.com/137191/googles-record-valuation-is-still-130-b...)

pawelk 13y ago

> 16B? That's a B, people. I wanted to put the number into perspective to wrap my head around it and it seems that $19B (I've added the $3B RSUs) was the public healthcare budget for 2013 in my country of almost 40 milion citizens.