After Earnings: What’s Next For Facebook?

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I joined CNBC’s Adam Bakhtiar and Pauline Chiou to chat about Facebook (FB) earnings and what’s next for the social media giant.

Facebook knocked the cover off the ball this past quarter, beating analyst estimates by a wide margin (non-GAAP EPS of $0.54 vs. consensus estimate of $0.48). Revenues also came in higher than expected and rose 49% compared to the prior year. Yet the stock fell after hours.

What gives?

To start, Facebook’s expenses came in much higher than expected, rising about 87%. Zuckerberg warned us last quarter that expenses would be rising, and he meant it. A fair bit of the expenses were due to Facebook’s expansion into video, but Facebook also dropped $900 million in stock-based compensation, mostly related to its purchase of Whatsapp.

So, what’s next for Facebook?

Let’s start with what the company is doing right. Facebook has done a really good job of monetizing its user base, especially its mobile user base. There were serious doubts a few quarters ago as to Facebook’s ability to profitably transition its users to mobile. Well, we can lay those fears to rest. Mobile makes up a larger proportion of Facebook’s revenues every quarter.

Facebook is also doing a fine job of keeping its users engaged. One metric here is the ratio of daily active users to monthly active users, which has held steady at about 64%.

Unfortunately, Facebook’s traditional site may be reaching the end of its fast-growth phase. Monthly active user growth dipped to 13% in the fourth quarter. That’s still phenomenally good, but  looking forward it’s hard to see where new users will come from. Roughly half the world’s population with access to the internet is already a monthly active user, and the prime markets of North America and Europe are saturated. Yes, Facebook can add new users in the developing markets of Africa and South Asia. But these are not going to be the lucrative customers that advertisers are willing to pay up for.

For Facebook stock to continue attracting Wall Street’s attention, we need to see a viable plan for monetizing Instagram and Whatapp. Right now, Facebook’s stock is pricing in a rosy outcome on those fronts.

Facebook trades for 70 times earnings and 19 times sales, which is remarkable for a $200 billion company, roughly half the size of a Microsoft (MSFT) or ExxonMobil (XOM). This is not some start-up; it’s one of the top 15 largest companies in the world. Investors are implicitly expecting Facebook to come up with some major new revenue streams and quickly.

Can Zuckerberg deliver? We’ll see. He’s proven to be a worthy competitor, and I wouldn’t want to bet against him. But based on Facebook’s valuation, the market has already priced in results that even Zuckerberg will have a hard time delivering.

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Comments

Kurt Benson 9 years ago Member's comment

Really interesting discussion. I too has been wondering where Facebook will continue getting users. But I recently read that Zuckerberg is planning to heavily invest in bringing the internet to the developing world.

The entire PR pitch was to make him sound like a philanthropist, but it was pretty obvious to me that it was to get more users to Facebook. There a huge market out there of untapped potential and once he gets them online, they are ripe for the picking.

Angry Old Lady 9 years ago Member's comment

Yes, I read about that as well. If Zuckerberg wants to be a humanitarian, he should focus on ending world hunger before ending non-internet connectivity. People need to eat over there, not be on Facebook. It was just a shallow attempt to make more money while trying to appear philanthropic about it.

Joel Santiago 9 years ago Member's comment

How is he going to do that without spending billions on infrastructure?

Kurt Benson 9 years ago Member's comment

If I recall, at least part of the plan was to utilize the fact that many people in developing countries have no internet access or computers but do already have phones. What they don't have are data plans to access the internet on those phones.

Zuckerberg was partnering with cellular companies to provide free data plans limited to specific sites. The assumption being they'd get hooked and upgrade to more costly plans. But at least in the short term, it would give Facebook access to millions of more users.