[HN Gopher] Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results
___________________________________________________________________
Meta Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Results
Author : kgwgk
Score : 84 points
Date : 2023-02-01 21:13 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (investor.fb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (investor.fb.com)
| chollida1 wrote:
| Numbers:
|
| - Q4 add revenue of $31B Est of $30B
|
| - $40B share bye back, far better than spending on the meta verse
| and an admission growth is over
|
| - note to above, check out their existing cash on hand
|
| - VR lost $4.2B, come on guys on revenue of $700M, again, come on
| guys get someone who knows what they are doing running this area
|
| - 86,500 employees, I'm guessing alot of these are in
| recruitment, content moderation, etc
|
| - laid off/fired 13% of workforce so far this running year
|
| - daily users of more than 2B, wow, growth of 5% yoy, that is
| good
|
| - shares up 15% probably alot to do with the Fed and tax loss
| selling holding period being over, so people putting this trade
| back on
|
| - Total restructuring charges recorded under our FoA segment were
| $3.76 billion and RL segment were $440 million during the fourth
| quarter of 202 (FOA is family of applications and RL is reality
| lab). not sure what those charges are for, look into this.
|
| - on adds, from Bloomberg reporting "Ad impressions increased by
| 18% while average price per ad decreased by 16% for 2022."
|
| - So the add number they can game went up and the one affected by
| market force went down.
|
| Thoughts:
|
| - attempting to come back form Q2 and Q3 yoy decrease in revenue
|
| - watch ad revenue, snap was down on large ad revenue declines.
| FB should be the same given they are in the same ad markets
|
| - how often is tiktok mentioned by FB, or will they continue to
| pretend they have no competitors?
|
| - Fed announced a small rate hike that the market loved so FB
| could rip if they perform even moderately well
|
| - as always check out what shares of SNAP, Pinterest and GOOG do
| on Meta results, especially if add revenue is up, well maybe not
| SNAP as the market has given up on that company, GOOG and PINS
| are up, heck so is SNAP
|
| - one other thing to watch closely is what Susan Li, the CFO says
| in the call, like what google did with Ruth Porat, they hired a
| numbers person to be the "adult" in the room to cut costs where
| possible.
|
| Will the CFO talk about cutting costs or growign the company.
|
| * note* I guess a huge $40B buy back indicates that FB's growth
| is over and Mark is capitulating to wall street here by handign
| back cash, rather than burning it on VR
| codemac wrote:
| Re: Susan Li
|
| Unlike Google, they did not hire the former EVP & CFO of Morgan
| Stanley, and next in line for Head of Treasury before she
| withdrew (making too much money at ms to move).
|
| I think Susan seems great from afar (i am but a lowly swe), but
| it's hard to see them similar in any way. Susan Li joined FB in
| 2008 after her first job as an analyst for ~3 years at, you
| guessed it, Morgan Stanley.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > - 86,500 employees, I'm guessing alot of these are in
| recruitment, content moderation, etc
|
| Headcount was 86,482 as of December 31, 2022, an increase of
| 20% year-over-year. Our reported headcount includes a
| substantial majority of the approximately 11,000 employees
| impacted by the layoff we announced in November 2022, who will
| no longer be reflected in our headcount by the end of the first
| quarter of 2023.
| [deleted]
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| Wow so with the 10 billion total loss on VR last earnings, are
| they now up to 14 billion spent on VR and metaverse? That's
| unbelievable for how little there is to show of it.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| > That's unbelievable for how little there is to show of it
|
| They multiplied the size of the market by an order of
| magnitude and they dominate the entire VR industry now?
| Miraste wrote:
| Is it really a market when you created it by burning $6 for
| every dollar you make?
| Miraste wrote:
| I would love to know where this money is _going_. $700M isn
| 't bad revenue at all, that's probably more than all VR
| competitors combined and certainly enough to run the division
| off of. They canceled all the really promising/expensive R&D
| efforts like their own SoC and their own OS, so they're once
| more dependent on Android (eh) and Qualcomm (nooo). They
| haven't launched any major software and the hardware has
| stayed the same except for the massively underwhelming Quest
| Pro, which they're having to sell for $400 off right now.
|
| Either the Quest 3 reveal is going to be stunning or
| bureaucratic bloat has grown to the point it's sinking the
| division.
| jayd16 wrote:
| When you say they haven't launched any major software do
| you just mean they haven't launched a killer app? The
| platform has had lots of incremental updates and continues
| to.
| Miraste wrote:
| They haven't launched much of anything - incremental
| updates are well and good, but the Quest Pro software
| page is unchanged from when it launched. The top selling
| software page is the same stuff it's been for years,
| largely the same as the Steam VR page since the launch of
| the Vive. Their biggest software release in 2022 was
| "Among Us VR." Richie's Plank Experience, an app from
| 2017 where you walk on a board, is still in the top
| sellers. To me these are not signs of a healthy
| ecosystem.
| [deleted]
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > - laid off/fired 13% of workforce so far this running year
|
| I wish it was acceptable/normal for companies to reveal how
| much more of their workforce (if any) they plan to layoff in
| the coming quarters
|
| It's almost as if there's a need for headcount projections.
|
| > daily users of more than 2B, wow, growth of 5% yoy, that is
| good
|
| eh, i always feel like this is dishonest for them. if a daily
| user is on whatsapp and they never see an ad, isn't that user
| just an expense for them? instagram users scrolling ads:
| revenue. facebook user scrolling ads: revenue. me talking to my
| family on whatsapp? unless they're benefiting from scanning the
| chat and delivering me ads on it (is this what they do? is it
| legal?) isn't it kind of like... they're paying the
| bandwidth/storage costs and getting very little out of it?
|
| > on adds, from Bloomberg reporting "Ad impressions increased
| by 18% while average price per ad decreased by 16% for 2022."
|
| is this left over from "apple's privacy changes made our ad
| targeting less effective so we need to display more, lower
| quality ads that are worth less to get as many conversions as
| we used to previouly"?
| pavlov wrote:
| 2B is the daily active users for Facebook specifically.
|
| For the entire family of apps it's 2.96 billion DAU (i.e.
| people who used one or several of FB/Insta/WhatsApp during
| the day).
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| would you agree with the statement that a WhatsApp user is
| most likely the least profitable compared to FB/Insta or do
| you think that statement is missing some kind of
| information?
| ojbyrne wrote:
| I believe they've talked about this on earnings before,
| as an area with very significant potential for increasing
| monetization.
| pavlov wrote:
| You were talking about WhatsApp in context of the 2
| billion number which doesn't include WhatsApp users.
| gen220 wrote:
| Question for folks here: what is the bull case for Meta remaining
| a growth stock, given the current regulatory environment and
| uncertainty around the medium-term prospects of VR as an
| "attention" category?
|
| More concretely, what is the scenario for META going back to
| "good ol' days of" mid-20%, low-30% YoY quarterly revenue growth,
| given mounting regulatory and privacy barriers that are largely
| beyond their ability to exert influence/control?
|
| Context is they're on a streak of 4 quarters of <10% YoY
| quarterly growth for the first time in their history. Last three
| quarters were basically air-balls (flat / slightly-negative).
| rcme wrote:
| Why does it need to be a growth stock? It's still pretty cheap
| even for a value stock.
| gen220 wrote:
| I think the current after-market price ($180ish) pushes it
| out of the "value" category, at least for me (there's no hard
| science on this).
|
| To me, $180ish prices-in some growth that I'm personally
| skeptical towards, hence my question! :)
| deltree7 wrote:
| Metaverse is a $20 Trillion market by 2035.
|
| Only Apple and Meta are the true players who are all in. Even
| if Apple captures some high-end market, Meta has the
| opportunity to sweep the rest
| ipsum2 wrote:
| That's a ridiculous forecast.
| gen220 wrote:
| Do you think Metaverse ad revenue will not cannibalize social
| media revenue, as people shift their attention from one to
| the other?
|
| Or that Metaverse attention will somehow be 100x as valuable
| as social media attention (current global social media
| revenue is $200ishbn)?
| lvl102 wrote:
| You know Meta has the best tech in terms of AI/ML right? They
| just need a new leadership focus to steer the company in the
| right direction. They literally have all the tools to lead in
| that area.
| gen220 wrote:
| How does this concretely translate into a marginal $30bn/year
| in revenue?
|
| Inverting the question, who would collectively pay $30bn/year
| to buy "AI/ML from Meta", assuming you're talking about a new
| product offering.
| deltree7 wrote:
| There are only two platforms where AI/ML will be delivered.
|
| Cloud for the Enterprise
|
| and
|
| Mixed Reality for People.
|
| Mixed Reality is the final platform that kills all other
| platforms and has a potential greater than $40 Trillion
| germinalphrase wrote:
| " There are only two platforms where AI/ML will be
| delivered"
|
| Why would you believe these are the only platforms?
| rcme wrote:
| Do they? The LLM they released was much worse than GPT-3.
| lvl102 wrote:
| All those models are only as good as the data they're
| trained on. Google and Meta both have the most relevant
| proprietary data that cannot be rivaled. Not even close.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| It's largely worse from the outside because meta has no
| goodwill to make mistakes and iterate in public. GPT-2/3
| were just as bad at hallucination, if not worse. That
| doesn't mean that meta isn't iterating on their LLM in
| private using the 3b users and armies of labelers to fine-
| tune and improve their model.
|
| From what I understand, they have one of the strongest
| translation models at scale, and their recommendation
| models for advertising are likely only rivaled by Google or
| Bytedance
| tukantje wrote:
| Normally acquiring smaller companies would be the answer but
| that is no longer possible, it would seem.
|
| They also couldn't diverge into finance.
|
| Honestly, by this point, it could be that the stock is hit too
| hard, but I fail to see a long term bull case as things are
| today.
| gen220 wrote:
| They're currently priced at 3.5x annualized revenue. If you
| assume they could capture 20% of that revenue consistently,
| that's 20x annualized profits (equivalent to 13ish years of
| profit on this basis).
|
| To me, this seems close to the max price I'd value Meta,
| given the headwinds to growth they face.
|
| The inability to grow via acquisition seems like a big hurdle
| -- that's what I was hinting at with "regulatory pressure".
|
| To me, I think the bull case is that they come out with an
| Apple-tier-quality headset, thereby begetting and capturing
| the mainstream headset market from a data privacy point of
| view, and that this new market is additive or multiplicative
| to their core ads business, rather than cannibalizing (an
| idea that is, itself, suspect).
|
| IDK. If I bought at $90 (which I didn't, somewhat foolishly
| in hindsight), I'd feel pretty comfortable selling at the
| current after-market price.
| tukantje wrote:
| Oh definitely, we are not disagreeing.
|
| I have two rules personally - don't invest in highly
| speculative assets, don't invest short term.
|
| So I am out of $META in general, as it fails the test on
| both prongs for me. It is highly volatile at the moment,
| and if I think 10 years into the future, the only reason I
| can think of for them being around is "network effects".
| Compared to something like $NVDA, that is just a weak
| argument in my opinion.
| gen220 wrote:
| Yes! Sorry didn't mean to sound like I was disagreeing, I
| was more just riffing on what you said. More riffing
| below :)
|
| I think $META will continue to win the "social network"
| game on any computing platform into the foreseeable
| future, as that's their "unreasonable" competency. i.e.
| Even if Apple wins the VR hardware game, Meta has an
| unfair advantage at developing the most popular social
| media app on that platform.
|
| However, I struggle to see a narrative where the
| _capturable value_ of that social media landscape
| increases at growth stock rates into the distant future,
| given the fact that any VR winner other than Meta is
| liable to create a more-private-by-default computing
| platform than previous platforms of computing (this seems
| to be a secular trend).
|
| So, even if Meta controls the same percentage of the
| "social media advertising" market into the transition to
| VR, I could see this being a smaller TAM than "social
| media advertising" is at (now-peak) web 2.0.
|
| That is, it seems like their only hope to remain a growth
| stock to become the "Apple of VR", which seems to be
| squarely outside their circle of competency.
|
| All in all, I'd agree with you and put META in the "too
| hard" / "probably not" category at current price.
| Although, even with these uncertainties, $90 was a no-
| brainer in retrospect (even assuming permanently-flat
| revenue). With perfect hindsight, I would have bought
| then and probably sold at $120, although that's all hot
| air (X
| firstfewshells wrote:
| Should have loaded those shares a couple of months back, smh. Up
| 70%+ since Nov last year.
| rvz wrote:
| The death of Meta Platforms Inc. (Formerly Facebook Inc) has once
| again been greatly exaggerated.
|
| Perhaps you should have bought the stock when it went below $90
| rather than screaming about the price going to zero.
|
| How things change in just several months. I have always expected
| the same: _Business as usual_ [0]
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32256465
| modeless wrote:
| +20% after hours, wow
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Wow is right. This feels kind of ... speculative.
| modeless wrote:
| The crash seemed speculative to me. This feels like a return
| to normal honestly.
| [deleted]
| bubbleRefuge wrote:
| The bigger story is that Federal Reserve Interest rate policy is
| stimulating rather than slowing down the economy as desired.
| Higher interest rates is higher interest payments into the
| economy by the government which is the deficit spending. The
| problem with it is that its very regressive. So folks holding
| large amounts of cash are benefitting from the added interest
| income. In 100 years history will judge these guys as clueless
| buffoons. Hitting the accelerator pedal rather than the brakes.
| lokar wrote:
| Do you work at the central bank of turkey?
| bubbleRefuge wrote:
| better yet check argentina.
| michaericalribo wrote:
| Seems like anti-tracking by Apple had a tangible impact on their
| business -- revenue down from last year.
| blsapologist42 wrote:
| Revenue increased (very slightly) on a constant currency basis
| whateveracct wrote:
| Sounds like it works then! Glad I always press "Ask App Not to
| Track"
| el_nahual wrote:
| objectively this means you still get ads just less releavnt
| ones, no? It's not like the button says "Don't show me ads."
| timeon wrote:
| Less relevant are better if you do not like ads. It is bit
| easier to filter them out of the mind.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| The main effect of that button is blocking the measurement
| of whether your ad click turned into a purchase, which is
| important because pricing ads based on conversions is more
| efficient than charging for impressions or clicks.
|
| "Relevant" ads are sort of a red herring. Ad
| personalization matters, but commercially it's less
| important than conversion measurement. Notably, Apple asks
| for permission before showing personalized ads, but never
| asks for permission to track conversions (while blocking
| competitors from tracking conversions by default).
| dangwhy wrote:
| > objectively this means you still get ads just less
| releavnt ones, no?
|
| business might choose to not show ads at all vs showing
| irrlevent ads. Surely there is a downside and risk to
| showing ads, a risk that cannot be taken willy nilly.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Less targeted ads are less likely to psychologically
| manipulate me in to spending money. I'd like an option to
| only show me ads I have no chance of spending money for.
| odood wrote:
| Let's see if Apple's own ad program will step into that void it
| created.
| bdhe wrote:
| Funny how that works. How is Apple's ad platform doing these
| days? Does anyone know?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Yeah it's huge. Lots of small niche businesses in our area lost
| their route for finding new customers (General advertising too
| expensive for their market demo.).
| ericmay wrote:
| Yikes. Good lesson learned for them there I hope.
| smoldesu wrote:
| The lesson: "Always pay tribute to the bigger company"
| jiscariot wrote:
| The lesson is you want to own the platform. Because then
| you get to brand the META/GOOG ad opt-in "tracking" and
| yours "enhanced digital experience".
| whywhywhydude wrote:
| Yeah, great lesson that unless you are a billionaire who is
| ready to spend millions on superbowl ads, you have no
| business starting a new brand.
| dnissley wrote:
| What do you think the lesson is?
| nerdix wrote:
| That they should go directly to Apple for targeted
| advertising when iAd 2.0 launches.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The philosophical lesson is that certain businesses just
| can't exist without targeted advertisements, and that
| society might decide that is a price they are willing to
| pay.
| jihadjihad wrote:
| Net income down ~40% YoY ouch. Stock is up though!
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| what's the main reason for this?
| ra7 wrote:
| $40B increase to their buyback program.
|
| Edit: Actually meant _announcement_ of an increase to buyback
| program, not that they 've already done it.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| I don't think that's correct. They announced a future
| increase of $40 billion. And I don't think share
| repurchases affect net income anyway.
| dd36 wrote:
| Stock buybacks aren't on the Income Statement...
| gen220 wrote:
| Hrm, no. The $40bn they announced is forward-looking
| guidance for 2023. In 2022 they repurchased $28bn (2021
| they repurchased $44bn) [1].
|
| Not sure that I'd call this "admitting defeat on growth" as
| other people have said elsewhere in this thread, given that
| they've done buybacks of this magnitude before.
|
| The main issue, it seems, is that they grew expenditures on
| cost of revenue and R&D (i.e. operations and capex), but
| revenue (advertising from family of apps, whatever revenue
| VR yields) did not keep pace -- in fact, it was flat on a
| YoY basis [2].
|
| IMO, this doc is strong evidence that the layoffs were a
| bona fide good idea. Will be interesting to compare to
| Alphabet's tomorrow.
|
| [1]: see the cash flow statement on page 8, the search term
| is "Repurchase" https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_f
| inancials/2022/q4...
|
| [2]: revenue and income figures are broken out on page 10.
| costs of revenue/r&d figures on page 6.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| what would the number look like if it weren't for this?
| StrangeDoctor wrote:
| Hard to predict and I'm not sure of the timeline of
| purchases, but 40B was 10% of their market cap at
| closing, which is kinda bonkers. So naively at least a
| 10% jump.
| chollida1 wrote:
| That cash hasn't come out of the corporate treasury yet:)
| blsapologist42 wrote:
| Costs went up a lot, primarily from increased payroll. That's
| why they did a big layoff, although I believe they still have
| more employees than end of 2021 even after that.
| ojbyrne wrote:
| As someone who was laid off, this is because while the
| announcement was in November, the WARN period meant we were
| all on the payroll until into 2023.
| gen220 wrote:
| Yea, I think the point-in-time, annualized R&D expense on
| 2023/03 will be the midpoint of the reported figure for
| 2022 and 20221. (~$30bn, where EOY 2022 was $35bn and EOY
| 2021 was $24.6bn).
|
| The layoff, we can imagine, impacted maybe 15% of R&D at
| most.
|
| It might still be too high in 2023, depending on what their
| revenue figures do in Q1/Q2. Would be interesting if they
| needed to do another layoff -- doesn't seem outside the
| realm of possibility.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| kind of interesting
|
| covid happened, money was printed to replace lost wages but
| somehow it trickled up
|
| plus people couldn't leave their house so tech companies
| saw booms in sales/revenue
|
| so then inflation happened to the tune of 8% and the
| narrative was "if you didn't get at least an 8% raise 2019
| -> 2020 -> 2021 each year you basically got a paycut"
|
| and now we're seeing layoffs that basically feel like a
| reaction/counterbalance to any inflation rasies (or hires)
| that were given/made
|
| "if a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear
| it"
|
| "if you get an inflation-sized big raise but then get laid
| off, did you really get a raise at all?"
| nwellnhof wrote:
| Probably a huge short squeeze.
| kerpotgh wrote:
| [dead]
| bilsbie wrote:
| How do they make all this money when everyone I know has stopped
| using it?
|
| Other countries?
| 1123581321 wrote:
| You don't know anyone on Instagram? That seems very unlikely.
| And yes, the United States only supplies a quarter of a billion
| of Facebook's/Instagram's three billion users.
| mtoner23 wrote:
| you are not the average american
| xuki wrote:
| Because you don't know everyone.
| smith7018 wrote:
| Instagram is an app and therefore can't have its ads (easily)
| blocked. Facebook is mostly used by older people that don't
| know about ad blockers.
| charcircuit wrote:
| Facebook is an app too
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Always remember that the US is like 4% of the world population.
| peanuty1 wrote:
| Their profit margin on international users is way, way lower
| than US and Canada.
| gen220 wrote:
| They deliver more ads today than they have at any point in
| their history. That's a function of active users, and of their
| UX. The instagram/fb experience of today is not anything like
| it was 5 years ago -- there are a lot more ads.
|
| At the same time, more people are "using" their family of apps
| in one way or another on a daily or monthly basis. These
| metrics entail all kinds of flaws, but ads delivered and ad
| impressions are the metric that explain the phenomenon you
| describe, more than net-new users.
|
| That being said, yes, international expansion is a big deal for
| how they grow the "user" count metrics.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Up 17% in AH, on top of huge gains over the past 2 months. Nuts.
| It looks like it really wants to get back to $300+ It shows how
| all this talk about metaverse losses was overblown. This is why
| my best piece of financial advice is to tune out the media. By
| the time something is a narrative, it's too late. If the media is
| talking about how Facebook peaked or is the next myspace, this is
| time to buy. Same for Netflix.
|
| Metaverse notwithstanding, Facebook and Instagram are still huge
| cash cows. Ad CPCs are really high, especially mobile ads.
| Companies, especially in financial services and healthcare,
| paying so much $ for clicks to target older people, retirees,
| etc. and also people with medical problems. Obesity epidemic
| means more healthcare spending, same for people living longer.
| rvz wrote:
| > This is why my best piece of financial advice is to tune out
| the media.
|
| I'm trying very hard to not say 'I told them so'.
|
| In fact, I said this before here [0] [1] [2] too many times to
| stop listening to the nonsense from the media. Meta has lots of
| cash to last for another decade and they are _still_ printing
| money.
|
| Such calls for the death of Meta Platforms on HN and in the
| media has once again always been greatly exaggerated.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31832439
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33991718
|
| [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32256465
| __derek__ wrote:
| Buying back another $40 billion in stock also helps. The
| narrative around metaverse costs was largely that they should
| return cash to shareholders rather than dumping so much of it
| into that incinerator. It looks like the board took that
| advice.
| jlmorton wrote:
| > rather than dumping so much of it into that incinerator.
|
| It's strange to me that people think Reality Labs is an
| incinerator. Truly, without exaggeration, I think this entire
| perception is based on the ridiculous early Horizon Worlds
| screenshots Mark Zuckerberg posted, which did a ton of damage
| to Meta.
|
| But Horizon Worlds is not The Metaverse, and it's not Reality
| Labs! It's one part of it. Reality Labs has game studios, the
| leading VR/AR hardware, all kinds of software packages to
| make working in the Metaverse possible, like Horizon
| Workrooms, Horizon Remote Desktop, and quite a bit more. They
| are quickly developing a fairly insurmountable moat.
|
| Meanwhile, Apple is also dumping billions into AR, but they
| don't break it out in earnings reports, so no one talks about
| it.
|
| There are lots of execution risks in Meta's VR strategy.
| Obviously, if no one ever wants their products for games,
| work, entertainment, or whatever else, then they will have
| incinerated an awful lot of money. But I think that's
| actually the unlikely scenario.
| MarcoZavala wrote:
| [dead]
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| > Facebook and Instagram are still huge cash cows.
|
| I wonder what that makes TikTok then? Do we have any insight
| into how much ad cash Facebook + Instagram generate compared to
| TikTok?
| avrionov wrote:
| $5B last year 2022.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1305708/tiktok-ad-
| revenu...
| bboygravity wrote:
| Or price discovery in US markets is completely broken. Could
| also explain it.
|
| Mumbles something about perpetual FTDs, naked shorting, the
| biggest market maker also being a hedge fund (who donates many
| millions to corrupt politcians), tokenized securities that can
| be used as short locates and so on...
| matwood wrote:
| I said months ago when they announced layoffs that Meta is
| fine. They are a literal cash volcano. Zucks foray into the
| metaverse to the tune of 10B/year is dumb, but it's a cash
| expense. Eventually he'll tone that investment down and that
| expense will flow right to the bottom line. Full disclosure, I
| am long Meta.
| jcfrei wrote:
| On a yearly basis they are still down about 4% in revenue from
| advertising and apps and down 17% in the reality labs section.
| Their business is just shrinking less quickly than investors
| feared.
| melling wrote:
| It feels like only 3 months ago I was repeatedly trying to
| convince HN readers that Meta was a great investment
| opportunity at a P/E of 9. In fact, it was...:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33572187
|
| Markets aren't efficient. People are biased and can't look past
| them.
|
| There's quite a bit of knowledge on HN. As a group, we could do
| much better understanding the markets.
| dd36 wrote:
| Markets measure the tiny fraction of buyers and sellers on a
| given day and ignore the super majority of holders. It almost
| feels like length of ownership should be more determinative
| of price movements than anything else. If long-term holders
| start selling, it's concerning.
| rcme wrote:
| > Markets measure the tiny fraction of buyers and sellers
| on a given day and ignore the super majority of holders.
|
| Not really. The decision to not sell and to not buy is
| itself reflective of the price. If a stock is super cheap,
| people will buy. If the stock is priced fairly or
| overpriced, few people will buy. Same goes for selling.
| somethoughts wrote:
| It almost feels like length of ownership should be more
| determinative of price movements than anything else.
|
| >> Length of ownership AND relatedly original cost basis. I
| think a lot of stocks can seem to defy gravity (i.e. high
| PE and/or high P/FCF) when the founder and the early
| investors HODL stocks. At $0.0001 per share, HODLing (in
| say TSLA, META, MSFT, BTC) is easy since there is/was no
| upfront capital paid in and holding has essentially no cost
| basis - so there's no need to act like rationally like a
| later stage investor.
|
| >> Founders and early investors can easily own up to 40-50%
| of the company and really its only when the founder
| retires/starts diversifying and the founder and early
| investors start to unload - does price discovery occur on
| the entirety of the shares outstanding.[1]
|
| [1] Mark Zuckerberg Sold Facebook Stock Nearly Every
| Weekday Last Year For Almost 11 Months https://www.forbes.c
| om/sites/rachelsandler/2022/01/06/mark-z...
| blsapologist42 wrote:
| How much money did you make by doing this? Talk is cheap...
| deltree7 wrote:
| HN is the worst place for investment.
|
| The smarter the people, the bigger the ego and limited the
| vision.
|
| Between ArsTechnica, HN and reddit and you can bet against
| popular opinions on this. You can also identify cult
| formation too.
| dsco wrote:
| Even Paul Graham tweeted that crypto had a systemic risk.
| Bitcoin is up like 30% since that tweet.
|
| HN != Financial advice
| kruxigt wrote:
| [dead]
| endisneigh wrote:
| No one could have predicted they'd buy back such a ridiculous
| amount of their own stock.
| kgwgk wrote:
| $7bn in Q4 is just like the $21bn in the three previous
| quarters - when the stock was going down - and doesn't seem
| so unpredictable.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Really? Meta bought back less in 2022 than they did in
| 2021.
| endisneigh wrote:
| Exactly.
| paulpauper wrote:
| _Markets aren't efficient. People are biased and can't look
| past them._
|
| I think they are efficient most of the time, but there are
| edge cases that allow for higher risk-adjusted returns than
| predicted by a purely efficient framework. A notable example
| is Renaissance Technologies.
| another_story wrote:
| In the last 3 months the entire market has come back up. I
| have safe agricultural stocks that have risen nearly as much
| in this time. FB bouncing back and having a low PE doesn't
| make it a good investment. People are looking longterm at
| their prospects and where they're dumping their cash and they
| don't like it.
| kccqzy wrote:
| The S&P 500 is up by about 10.7% in the past three months.
| Meta is up by 72.2%.
| wintogreen74 wrote:
| unless you timed it perfectly (tl;dr you didn't) Meta was
| off by way more than the core stocks in the S&P 500 too
| reaperducer wrote:
| Unless you quantify how many agricultural stocks are on
| the S&P, you're not addressing his point.
| remote_phone wrote:
| I started loading up when it dropped 30% on mediocre
| earnings. My average price is 95 and I'm holding until $300.
| SilasX wrote:
| That goes to the full discussion of an unrelated story.
| Direct link to the subthread where you made the FB comment:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33573232
|
| (Edit: I would have referred to the company as Meta, like you
| did, but "the Meta comment" could have been confusing, even
| with the capitalized letter.)
| dangwhy wrote:
| markets are irrational except when it goes up 17% AH ?
| [deleted]
| baron816 wrote:
| I bought a small amount of META when the narrative of its
| downfall hit its peak. It's the first individual stock I've
| bought in 12 years. I'm now going to be up about 60%.
| loeg wrote:
| What does AH stand for? Thanks.
| dagmx wrote:
| After hours , as in stock movement after the market has
| closed for the day.
| marcyb5st wrote:
| After hours. Wall street is closed basically.
| loeg wrote:
| Thank you (and sibling).
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