Facebook shares fall 7% on Oculus deal(latimes.com)
latimes.com
Facebook shares fall 7% on Oculus deal
http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook-shares-fall-on-oculus-deal-20140326,0,5772521.story#axzz2x6wLDZwD
81 comments
Its $2B for the spend and $8B in information that Zuck might not know what he's doing.
Maybe investors are mad about their shares being diluted through these stock deals?
Rather than mad, perhaps the investors are taking it as a signal that Facebook management, by buying other companies in mostly stock deals, believes that Facebook stock is overvalued.
That could be a rational rather than irrational explanation.
That could be a rational rather than irrational explanation.
Bingo. The Oculus and WhatsApp deals have added up to billions "spent" via mostly stock instead of cash. This is almost certainly due to insistence from the Facebook execs themselves, who clearly are expecting the price of their stock to fall in the long term and are attempting to extract some value from it while the price is still high.
The real evidence for this will be if Facebook buys TimeWarner.
There are only two ways to look at this and neither are good for the share price.
1.Z knows what he is doing and thinks the share price is overvalued.
2. Z has no idea what he doing. Who wants to own a company with incompetent management that can't be voted out by the shareholders.
1.Z knows what he is doing and thinks the share price is overvalued.
2. Z has no idea what he doing. Who wants to own a company with incompetent management that can't be voted out by the shareholders.
I didn't mean mad literally. I meant the intent that you mentioned.
I think you can attribute at least some of the decline to this. Only $400mm came from cash with additional shares possibly being issued based on performance. While this alone may not be a good reason for a long investor to drop shares, if it signals something about Zuckerberg's acquisition strategy going forward, then some investors may be expecting future dilution from new acquisitions. Furthermore, structure of share classes within FB also makes Zuckerberg's whims about this sort of strategy more influential to FB's direction than it would in another company.
Rational investors don't sell shares punitively, although if they believe that they'll continue to be diluted at a rapid pace, that could account for some of the downward valuation.
The old saying is: the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
It's not punitive, and is perfectly rational.
You buy some share in a company that you think will grow a lot; you discover that this company is not well managed, so it probably won't grow that much; you sell your stock, before the non-growth is realized.
You buy some share in a company that you think will grow a lot; you discover that this company is not well managed, so it probably won't grow that much; you sell your stock, before the non-growth is realized.
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I thought the article made a good point in that $2B wasn't perhaps what Occulus was worth, but how much it required in order to consider selling. FB had to pay a premium (perhaps because of its brand in the eyes of the owners of Occulus) in order to acquire the company, but it may be worth it to them anyways.
A premium? Figures I saw were 10M units at $300. That's 0.666x projected sales, when 2-3x is the norm for mature companies.
Not sure what you're referring to, re: 10 million units. They haven't sold anywhere near that.
Currently their price to sales ratio is closer to 150. Facebook paid a massive premium no matter how you cut it. Even if they grow sales ten fold over the next three years, they'll still have paid a premium. I don't think the Oculus purchase can be justified in any near-term financial regard, it's a very long term bet.
"Oculus has said it will start selling a consumer product in 2014, and till now has shipped an impressive 60,000 units to developers at $350 each"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/03/25/facebooks-...
Currently their price to sales ratio is closer to 150. Facebook paid a massive premium no matter how you cut it. Even if they grow sales ten fold over the next three years, they'll still have paid a premium. I don't think the Oculus purchase can be justified in any near-term financial regard, it's a very long term bet.
"Oculus has said it will start selling a consumer product in 2014, and till now has shipped an impressive 60,000 units to developers at $350 each"
http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/03/25/facebooks-...
I qualified it as 0.666x projected sales (intentionally not rounded >:), so yeah that 10M was a projected figure, which unfortunately I can't find the source for. By the end of 2015 I think Oculus will look like a steal, unless the goodwill is shot.
2-3x profit, right, not revenue? 10m units at $300 would not land anywhere near 3 billion in profits once you get to the bottom line. Lots of licensing fees coming up though.
No, revenue. For example Google's P/E (the equivalent profit ratio) is currently 31.4, and that's not including the control premium.
Comparing the cost multiple for a private company's acquisition to a P/E ratio of a public stock is way different and not really a fair comparison.
Generally the starting point for any tech acquisition is 3x - 5x revenue multiplier. Occulus is hardware so their margins are lower than software, pushing them closer to the 3x mark.
It's far from precise but I'd maintain it's useful to illustrate that if Oculus is a success, Facebook made a great buy.
That's nothing, AWS prices fell 60% upon hearing this news.
Apologies for not adding value, but, well played my friend.
That's not right - AWS prices did not drop due to Oculus Rift news but the Google Cloud news:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/2014/03/25/google-slash...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/2014/03/25/google-slash...
You're missing the joke. He understands the two have no way to be causally connected, but drawing the connection is hilarious.
You guys are falling for crappy financial news and are up-voting it out of personal opinion vindication.
Yeah, stories like this are garbage. Nobody knows why day-to-day fluctuations in the market happen. (Mostly.)
A priori, sure. After the fact, if you have detailed enough data it can be pretty easy to identify the timing of certain events.
It doesn't mean that the reaction is correct or that it won't be undone in the future. But there's a huge difference between "day to day fluctuations are unpredictable" and "day to day fluctuations are inexplicable."
It doesn't mean that the reaction is correct or that it won't be undone in the future. But there's a huge difference between "day to day fluctuations are unpredictable" and "day to day fluctuations are inexplicable."
Twitter was also down 7% today do you think that's explained by the Occulus deal?
The reality is the markets react to thousands of individual factors and often small changes lead into positive feedback loops. So, while the timing may be explained by some news breaking the magnitude of change is generally influenced by all those other factors.
The reality is the markets react to thousands of individual factors and often small changes lead into positive feedback loops. So, while the timing may be explained by some news breaking the magnitude of change is generally influenced by all those other factors.
No, I'm thinking of frequencies higher than 1 day.
Well, we had a couple of strong down days in the stock market over the last couple of days. Lots of momentum darlings like Netflix, Tesla, SolarCity, Pandora, Google, Twitter and Amazon took heavy hits. FB was already down 10% from its top in early March before today, so this was basically coincidence.
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In other financial news, Twitter shares fell 7.2% on the Oculus deal. Tesla lost 3.4% on the Oculus deal!
</sarcasm>
</sarcasm>
Well less people will probably buy Tesla's now that they can try out their facebook friend's Teslas with their new Oculus' :)
</s>
</s>
It is possible investors are getting cautious seeing repeat of 1999 bull pattern.
Looking at other tech stocks this seems like more of a broader downturn today. Twitter was down 7%, Zynga was down 4%, Amazon was down 3%. Correlation ≠ causation. I'm not buying the drop is from the Oculus buyout.
I think you can get a rough sense of whether this is true by using Beta (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_(finance)) - Beta represents the riskiness of the stock relative to the market as a whole
After a quick google it seems Facebook's beta is ~2. So a NASDAQ fall of <3.5% is an indication that something other than a general downturn impacted Facebook's price
Please correct me if my understanding is wrong
After a quick google it seems Facebook's beta is ~2. So a NASDAQ fall of <3.5% is an indication that something other than a general downturn impacted Facebook's price
Please correct me if my understanding is wrong
The first paragraph is correct but the second is not quite right, and is a common misconception. Beta is a lagging indicator and by itself cannot explain a stock's movement or lack thereof.
There are much better guides to stock volatility such as the put-call ratio, implied volatility of options or general market volatility as measured by VIX.
There are much better guides to stock volatility such as the put-call ratio, implied volatility of options or general market volatility as measured by VIX.
It is, other stocks with low betas had a bad day as well. Some of it might be the Oculus, but most of it probably isn't
[deleted]
I am no Facebook bull. But the financial logic in this article is lacking.
Facebook fell 7% in trading today. The NASDAQ fell 1.4%. So we have 3 (β=3) to 4 points (β=2) of excess losses. The author argues Facebook dragged down the NASDAQ today. Let's suffer the assumption. Using the S&P 500's 0.7% fall we see 5 to 6 points of excess losses. On a day the NASDAQ 100 Volatility Index jumped over 1 point intraday to 18 [1]. I don't smell blood yet.
Macquarie sees “no near-term financial model that will drive the $2 billion valuation.” Cross-posted below is my back-of-a-napkin work from a prior comment [2]. Development kit sales are not a perfect predictor of consumer sales. That said, they provide a snapshot of present enthusiasm for Oculus. They are also useful for forming ballpark estimates.
Oculus VR says it has sold 75 000 "development kits" [1]. It has been 1 year and 7 months since August 2012 [2], when Oculus 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 Oculus VR as if it were a growing perpetuity. If Facebook had a cost of capital of {10%, 20%, 30%}, Oculus 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 Oculus VR as a 20-year growing annuity. Setting Facebook's cost of capital at {10%, 20%, 30%}, Oculus VR's FCF would have to grow at least {45%, 58%, 71%} a year.
Not a bad deal.
[1] https://www.cboe.com/micro/vxn/#historical
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471826
Facebook fell 7% in trading today. The NASDAQ fell 1.4%. So we have 3 (β=3) to 4 points (β=2) of excess losses. The author argues Facebook dragged down the NASDAQ today. Let's suffer the assumption. Using the S&P 500's 0.7% fall we see 5 to 6 points of excess losses. On a day the NASDAQ 100 Volatility Index jumped over 1 point intraday to 18 [1]. I don't smell blood yet.
Macquarie sees “no near-term financial model that will drive the $2 billion valuation.” Cross-posted below is my back-of-a-napkin work from a prior comment [2]. Development kit sales are not a perfect predictor of consumer sales. That said, they provide a snapshot of present enthusiasm for Oculus. They are also useful for forming ballpark estimates.
Oculus VR says it has sold 75 000 "development kits" [1]. It has been 1 year and 7 months since August 2012 [2], when Oculus 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 Oculus VR as if it were a growing perpetuity. If Facebook had a cost of capital of {10%, 20%, 30%}, Oculus 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 Oculus VR as a 20-year growing annuity. Setting Facebook's cost of capital at {10%, 20%, 30%}, Oculus VR's FCF would have to grow at least {45%, 58%, 71%} a year.
Not a bad deal.
[1] https://www.cboe.com/micro/vxn/#historical
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7471826
At lunchtime today I was listening to the "business hour" on the radio. Two analysts went back and forth about the deal, repeatedly calling Oculus "a company that makes virtual reality games". There has to be a certain % of Wall Street that has no idea what's going on at all.
I think this dip is a promising short term buy.
Or, as I saw someone else recently commented: "Facebook is shorting the hell out of their own stock"
Another factor that probably influenced (maybe even more than Oculus?) the decline is today's IPO of King.com, that lost 15% wrt. the initial price.
I'm shocked that it didn't fall because of the Oculus deal, but look at twitter vs. fb in the last 48 hours... heavily covariant.
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
https://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=1&chdd=1&chds=1&chdv=1&...
"Oculus" briefly spiked 14% today when NASDAQ opened.
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AOCLS
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AOCLS
Similar to how TWTRQ spiked on Twitter's IPO...
Automated trading software perchance?
I was disappointed when I heard the acquisition news, but NOT because I thought it was a bad move by Facebook.
Buying companies like this will undoubtedly come back for them and help them be a dominant force.
The problem I have with this deal is that a vision of a geek oriented, gaming-first hardware-first company that had the support and faith of the community now WILL be influenced by the vision of a company that many people do not trust.
It's not a lack of trust in Facebook for the sake of it, but from many years of repeatedly abusing the trust of their user base.
Buying companies like this will undoubtedly come back for them and help them be a dominant force.
The problem I have with this deal is that a vision of a geek oriented, gaming-first hardware-first company that had the support and faith of the community now WILL be influenced by the vision of a company that many people do not trust.
It's not a lack of trust in Facebook for the sake of it, but from many years of repeatedly abusing the trust of their user base.
this is a poor headline. the latimes.com seems to imply causality between the two events when in fact, twitter fell 7% as well. So they could have written "Twitter falls 7% on Oculus deal"
Market news writers seem to always think they can attribute the market change to some event, even though they have no idea. This irks me to no end.
I guess you might have quite a short career as a market writer if you didn't want to link events to prices. You'd certainly write very short articles.
Are you saying that wouldn't be a good thing?
Automate this... <stock ticker> <fell|climbed> <x>% on <top company event of the day> - it's still be wrong but at least it wouldn't waste a writer's time.
Automate this... <stock ticker> <fell|climbed> <x>% on <top company event of the day> - it's still be wrong but at least it wouldn't waste a writer's time.
Pretty much because investors want a quick buck. They don't want to wait until Facebook owns the internet after mobile. That's way too far away and way too uncertain.
I think it's a combination of factors.
I don't think many investors are familiar with Oculus VR. To them, facebook has just paid $2B for a company that hasn't released a product to consumers yet, and intends to make one of those headsets that were a big flop in the 1990s.
The other side of it (as you point out) is that institutional investors are generally not in it for long-term gains. If you manage a portfolio at an investment company, are hoping to get a nice bonus this year/quarter, hearing Mark Zuckerberg say he's bought a company that might take 5 - 10 years before it adds anything to Facebook is probably not very impressive.
I don't think many investors are familiar with Oculus VR. To them, facebook has just paid $2B for a company that hasn't released a product to consumers yet, and intends to make one of those headsets that were a big flop in the 1990s.
The other side of it (as you point out) is that institutional investors are generally not in it for long-term gains. If you manage a portfolio at an investment company, are hoping to get a nice bonus this year/quarter, hearing Mark Zuckerberg say he's bought a company that might take 5 - 10 years before it adds anything to Facebook is probably not very impressive.
you are right but for value investors, I think that Oculus Rift could have a quite a big impact on the intrinsic value of Facebook, now the risk is, can they get it right? A non-gaming company getting into 3d virtual reality? Clearly, Google (actual experience of making hardware) doesn't think the timing is ripe yet.
What we have with Oculus Rift is that they were spooked by Sony, and decided to cash out while they still could.
VR will be a major major step for Sony if they get it right (which they are likely to do so) with PS4. They would absolutely own this space with their experience in 3d entertainment hardware.
What we have with Oculus Rift is that they were spooked by Sony, and decided to cash out while they still could.
VR will be a major major step for Sony if they get it right (which they are likely to do so) with PS4. They would absolutely own this space with their experience in 3d entertainment hardware.
Sony has one major disadvantage: they are tied up to the ps4 while PC's which are more powerful/upgradable are a better fit for VR.
There's rumors microsoft is working on VR. They also have an amazing 3d game creation platform for beginners called "project spark", very good at building developer communities a and would be happy to sell more PC's. Assuming they can create decent VR glasses, they seems to have the winning combination of hardware + content.
Even better - project spark content would be free, which is a powerful tool to achieve mass appeal.
There's rumors microsoft is working on VR. They also have an amazing 3d game creation platform for beginners called "project spark", very good at building developer communities a and would be happy to sell more PC's. Assuming they can create decent VR glasses, they seems to have the winning combination of hardware + content.
Even better - project spark content would be free, which is a powerful tool to achieve mass appeal.
They could always just do what Microsoft did with the first Xbox. There is nothing stopping them from putting a PC in a fancy box if that is a better product (VR versus no VR) than what they would otherwise do for the PS5.
I agree. If facebook were sticking to the web/mobile, their value as a company would be a bit limited, and there would always be the possibility that they will eventually be disrupted in the same way that they disrupted MySpace.
Zuckerberg yesterday was talking about building new computing platforms. That doesn't necessarily increase the value of Facebook, but it takes away a lot of the caps that would otherwise exist on their future valuation. Now no one knows how much they might be worth in 5 - 10 years.
Zuckerberg yesterday was talking about building new computing platforms. That doesn't necessarily increase the value of Facebook, but it takes away a lot of the caps that would otherwise exist on their future valuation. Now no one knows how much they might be worth in 5 - 10 years.
The whole market is in a downward trend at the moment, its not just affecting Tech stocks.
I don't think people should attribute today's FB action to the Oculus acquisition or its price/terms. A slight negative chatter (Read: "Amateur CEO wasting money on useless toys") could easily make big momentum reversals, especially in case of a stock that mostly priced by sentiment versus intrinsic cash flows.
Disclaimer: I'm by no means disparaging momentum strategies.
eh, TWTR dropped 7% too. wider market sold off.
While the market, in general, is probably responsible for most of this, it is an interesting question as to what investors think about this.
All of the Facebook acquisitions seem to be defensive. Even Oculus is a defensive maneuver against Google Glass, and the fact that Google is unquestionably committed to marketing Glass (see the latest pairings to attempt to market it to upscale people).
I suspect that Facebook has no idea what to do with Oculus, but it doesn't want it in the hands of Google or Microsoft.
All of the Facebook acquisitions seem to be defensive. Even Oculus is a defensive maneuver against Google Glass, and the fact that Google is unquestionably committed to marketing Glass (see the latest pairings to attempt to market it to upscale people).
I suspect that Facebook has no idea what to do with Oculus, but it doesn't want it in the hands of Google or Microsoft.
Twitter shares also fell by over 7% and the NASDAQ by 1.43%.
Most likely this is not "on Oculus deal" (at least not solely) but for many reasons only Mr. Market knows.
Most likely this is not "on Oculus deal" (at least not solely) but for many reasons only Mr. Market knows.
People are making a big deal out of nothing here. The bad publicity around the acquisition (if anything) caused the share price to drop, not investors misguided confidence in virtual reality tech. Lets not confuse the two. If people were applauding the acquisition, we would be reading an article on how the share price jumped 7%.
Fluctuations happen in the market every day tech stocks are particular delicate because it can be harder to predict what is going to happen. If you look around, you'll notice Amazon dropped 3%, Twitter also dropped 7% (amongst a few others also down).
We don't know for sure that the acquisition of Oculus even caused the drop. Although, looking back on previous FB acquisitions you see a drop of investor confidence as witnessed with the Whatsapp acquisition.
When Facebook announced the $19 billion purchase of Whatsapp their share price tumbled 4.8%, once again this was a short-lived drop once the fanfare died down. Facebook know what they are doing. The fact Sony are moving into the VR space and apparently Valve are also going to be getting in on it signals this isn't a fad, this is a new-found technology arms race.
He who has the most money wins and at the moment, Facebook have a bit of money and a good network of investors behind them to propel Oculus to the top of the VR market and inevitably beat competitors on not only features but the all important price factor.
Edit: I've been down-voted. I respect that, but if you're going to down-vote my argument at least have the audacity to counteract it in the form of a reply.
Fluctuations happen in the market every day tech stocks are particular delicate because it can be harder to predict what is going to happen. If you look around, you'll notice Amazon dropped 3%, Twitter also dropped 7% (amongst a few others also down).
We don't know for sure that the acquisition of Oculus even caused the drop. Although, looking back on previous FB acquisitions you see a drop of investor confidence as witnessed with the Whatsapp acquisition.
When Facebook announced the $19 billion purchase of Whatsapp their share price tumbled 4.8%, once again this was a short-lived drop once the fanfare died down. Facebook know what they are doing. The fact Sony are moving into the VR space and apparently Valve are also going to be getting in on it signals this isn't a fad, this is a new-found technology arms race.
He who has the most money wins and at the moment, Facebook have a bit of money and a good network of investors behind them to propel Oculus to the top of the VR market and inevitably beat competitors on not only features but the all important price factor.
Edit: I've been down-voted. I respect that, but if you're going to down-vote my argument at least have the audacity to counteract it in the form of a reply.
I think it is unfair that you have been down voted, but I think the reason is your statement that Facebook's management knows what they are doing. I don't know if they do, but the evidence so far at least looks questionable.
[deleted]
I think the biggest reason behind this is that the Oculus acquisition revealed how much of a credibility problem facebook has. And that reveals how weakly facebook's userbase is attached to them, and how easily it can go away.
You have to beta-adjust this. FB is a highly volatile MOMO stock. The market was down a fair amount today. I am short FB but FB probably would have been down 3-4% anyway today, so maybe an extra 3% from this second terrible deal of 2014.
I was planning on covering around $50, but given the pattern of the terrible and immature management decisions lately combined with souring macro environment, I'm planning on riding this one down to the 20s
I was planning on covering around $50, but given the pattern of the terrible and immature management decisions lately combined with souring macro environment, I'm planning on riding this one down to the 20s
Financial reporting, where post hoc ergo propter hoc is often the limit of analysis...
Value of Oculus Rift shares in Facebook just dropped $112M. Ouch.
It's about time someone comes with a new and better version of a social media website. Facebook is now a thing of the past.
Rubbish.
damn I should invest what my gut opinions tell me
But investors are clearly spooked by the latest pricey acquisition.
So basically, no one likes this deal except Zuckerberg, Carmack and Luckey.
Seems extreme, although it was a bad day for tech stocks anyway, so the portion of the drop attributable to the acquisition is surely smaller.
Anyway, the market seems to be communicating that not only does it think FB got bad value, but that this deal is bayesian evidence that it is being badly managed.
EDIT: I still don't think 100% of the decline is attributable to the broader market move, because TWTR and certainly KING should be more volatile than FB. But, yeah, the story might not be as clear as I thought.