More reports from big blue-chips stocks this week, and the one and only social media darling Facebook is out with a new fourth quarter earnings report on Wednesday 27, after the close. Will Facebook continue to grow?
I think they will continue to impress. Last year they reported 1,55B monthly active users (MAU). Thats an impressive jump of 14% YoY and not bad compared to Twitters 320M MAU`s last quarter.
Facebook acquired WatsApp, Instagram and Oculus Rift, and their instant ads will give more value back to the advertisers. Only last two years, Facebooks revenue is up about 40% and it doesnt seem to slow down anytime soon.
The Estimize consensus calls for EPS of $0,69, which is a penny higher than the Wall Street consensus and an increase of 11% over the past three months. Revenue expectations of $5,383B have also been lifted in that period by 6%, and are $27M ahead of the Street.
Its gonna be interesting to hear more about WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus Rift on Wednesday. How are they contributing? Facebook acquired WhatsApp and if you ask me, they burned a huge amount of money on that deal. Thats good for Jan Koum of course, but what about Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook?
In my recent article about that deal, I asked the following question; why should people buy 99 cents for WhatsApp when they have Skype for free? Not only that. There are many others on the market too. One of them is Facebook`s messaging service which is very popular.
It`s not a surprise for me to see that Facebook recently dropped the front-door charge to make it available for free for anybody in the world who wants it. What they are doing is testing out a new B2C platform, but it remains to see if that can bring in some revenue for Facebook.
The photo-sharing app Instagram is another player, and have been in the Facebook-family since 2012. So far, Facebook has not revealed its revenue from Instagram, so It`s gonna be interesting to hear more about that on Wednesday.
I`m also exited to hear more about Oculus Rift. Facebook paid $400m in cash plus 23,1m Facebook-shares for the maker of the Oculus Rift headset, with a further $300m in incentives if they hit certain milestones in the future.
Oculus Rift will be launched on March 28, 2016, so its only two months left. Its interesting to see how much they are willing to pay for each company and what they give in return. Spending 0,11 WhatsApp (or two Instagrams) on Oculus Rift was a big surprise for many investors.
Facebook has been slumping so far in 2016, but most of the investors call Facebook for a «buy».
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Ket Garden
Shiny bull 