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Facebook conference call about acquiring Oculus
- anigbrowl 13y agoExcellent find, thank you.
- rabbyte 13y agoIs it? I listened to about 10 minutes and couldn't figure out why I would listen to that. This isn't a scandal. I'm not sure why we're reviewing the tapes now.
- anigbrowl 13y agoI'm interested in how they pitch it to their staff/investors as a guide to where Zuckerberg intends to take the company. I agree investor conference calls are tedious to listen to but then SEC filings and annual reports are also boring unless you are interested in analyzing a firm.
- primitivesuave 13y agoI doubt the upvoters of this actually listened to it. It seems like when there is a big acquisition, people make it a point to cover the front page with relevant information, even when it's something with very little substance like an internal conference call.
- psbp 13y agoIt's still important to feel your stomach churn when you hear Zuckerberg talk about his "mission"
- deletes 13y agoSound like an announcement to the shareholders via a large conference call, not an internal discussion.
- Icer5k 13y agoYeah, this is a recording of the shareholder call earlier today (mentioned on the press release), not an internal call.
- Maxious 13y agoYep http://www.shareholder.com/visitors/event/build3/stage/stage.cfm?mediaid=63723&mediauserid=0 http://www.shareholder.com/visitors/event/build3/stage/stage... Best quote from Zuck: "We're clearly not a hardware company. We're not gonna try to make a profit off of the devices long term. We view this as a software and services thing, where if we can make it so that this becomes a network where people can be communicating and buying things and virtual goods, and there might be advertising in the world, but we need to figure that out down the line."
- lugg 13y agoShit so it just hit me what the end game is with this (I know should have been obvious.) Was kinda confused before thanks. Caprica holobands here we come... http://caprica.wikia.com/wiki/Holoband http://caprica.wikia.com/wiki/Holoband
- nobbyclark 13y agoIt will probably feel like this http://vimeo.com/m/8569187 http://vimeo.com/m/8569187
- prawn 13y agoIt's a VR social network, also with tie-ins to be used by educators and so on. I think I'd prefer if the ultimate VR social network was actually open source and decentralised if possible.
- aspensmonster 13y agoCaprica holobands with advertising.
- jonah 13y agoWill they buy SecondLife next?
- caseyf7 13y agoThis is not an internal conference call - this is a public investor conference call. Also available on the investor relations site.
- shravan 13y agoThis isn't actually an internal call. Sounds like a standard investor conference call.[1] [1]: http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=835447 http://investor.fb.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=835447
- ihuman 13y agoIt is. I wanted to use that as the submission title, but I had to use the uploader's title instead due to HN title guidelines.
- jpeg_hero 13y agoDo you have 1,000 karma?
- scintill76 13y agoDo the 1k people have special privileges in this area? The guidelines say the title can be changed if the original is misleading, which would seem to apply here.
- JumpCrisscross 13y agoFacebook missed mobile. This was a concern pre- and immediately post-IPO. It took an engineering overhaul and tens of billions of dollars in acquisitions to bridge the gap. The Occulus VR acquisition looks like Facebook hedging its bets with the future of consumer computing UX. Better $2 billion and, say, $200 million a year for ten years today than $19 billion tomorrow. Or so it seems he is thinking. Still, I like to check the math. Occulus VR says it has sold 75 000 "development kits" [1]. It has been 1 year and 7 months since August 2012 [2], when Occulus VR began selling its development kits. Let's assume a 200% YoY 2013 growth rate - that means 56 000 kits were sold in 2013. Let's say these keep selling at the $350 the Developer Kit 2 goes for [3]. That's $20 million in 2013 revenues. Let's turn that into $2 million of profits - a 10% margin. Let's value Occulus VR as if it were a growing perpetuity. If Facebook had a cost of capital of {10%, 20%, 30%}, Occulus VR free cash flow (FCF) would have to grow at least {10%, 20%, 30%} a year. Otherwise, its $2 billion price tag would not make sense. Companies are not immortal. Let's value Occulus VR as a 20-year growing annuity. Setting Facebook's cost of capital at {10%, 20%, 30%}, Occulus VR's FCF would have to grow at least {45%, 58%, 71%} a year. Not a bad deal. [1] http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-joins-facebook/ http://www.oculusvr.com/blog/oculus-joins-facebook/ [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift#History http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oculus_Rift#History [3] https://www.oculusvr.com/order/ https://www.oculusvr.com/order/
- epistasis 13y ago>It took an engineering overhaul and tens of billions of dollars to bridge the gap. Tens of billions of dollars for Facebook's mobile efforts?
- jdp23 13y ago$19B for WhatsApp
- mixedbit 13y agoUsing development kits sales as a base for such estimates doesn't make much sense. Development kits have low resolution, cause motion sickness, there are no playable games for them, you need to wait 1+ month for one. It is safe to assume that the kits were bought mostly by developers willing to experiment with the new platform. It is very hard to estimate how many end users will buy Oculus based on this number.
- BorisMelnik 13y agoSounds more like a pre-recorded greeting than a "conference call." Conference calls in our company sounds kind of like a huge argument at any given time.
- benbojangles 13y agogood to know I have nothing to fear.
- Istof 13y agoSounds like an ad ...