Meta Platforms (FB); Former Facebook

[winston]

not vested

Facebook Says Apple's iOS 14 May Lead to Halved Audience Network Advertising Income

Social media Facebook admitted that the iOS 14 operating system to be launched by Apple, may make the advertising income of the company's Audience Network to halve.

Audience Network allows mobile application developers to provide advertisements to target users based on data provided by Facebook.

iOS 14 is going to make Audience Network advertisements ineffective.

Source: AAStocks Financial News

[winston]

FTC Prepares Possible Antitrust Suit Against Facebook

Facebook FB declined in premarket trading Wednesday following a report that said the Federal Trade Commission was readying a possible antitrust case against the social media giant.

Charges could be filed in the next few months, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The FTC has spent more than a year investigating Facebook on antitrust grounds, but no final decision has been reached on whether to sue the company, the Journal reported.

The probe of Facebook is part of a broader investigation of market-leading internet companies initiated by the FTC and a collection of other state and federal offices. .

Sources told the Journal that the FTC interviewed Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the course of the investigation, and that charges could be filed by the end of this year.

The lawsuit needs to pass muster with the FTC's five-member commission, which will vote on whether or not to file charges.

Past reports suggested that investigators were honing in on Facebook's long track record of copying, or acquiring, smaller apps that were perceived as a threat to the social media giant.

The stock fell 1.07% in premarket trading to $269.50.

Source: The Street

[winston]

Buy This Stock’s Dip

FB stock stock is down about 12% from its high about a month ago.

Facebook is actually up 22.4% on the year and up 83% from the March lows.

the company is forecast to grow revenue 13.5% to $80.2 billion and grow earnings about 25% to $8.04 per share.

Next year (fiscal 2021) is forecast to be an acceleration year. Consensus expectations call for 24% revenue growth and 26.5% earnings growth to $10.15 per share.

Total assets of $139.7 billion are up almost 20% year over year and dominate total liabilities of $29.2 billion. The latter figure is up just 4.3% year over year.

Cash and equivalents sit at $58.2 billion as of the most recent quarter, while Facebook does not carry any long-term or current debt other than capital leases.

In Q1, Facebook generated free cash flow (FCF) of $7.3 billion. Last quarter was just $622 million, but included a $5 billion settlement with the FTC.

Source: Investor Place

https://tradesoftheday.com/2020/10/03/b ... ks-dip-20/

[winston]

not vested

Facebook's Path To $1.2Tn: An Asymmetric Risk-Reward Opportunity

by Anay Gawande

Summary

Facebook's superior social media product offerings used by half the world's population — Facebook, Whatsapp, Instagram and Messenger — are unparalleled and provide a competitive moat.

Facebook has elite fundamentals, high growth and a stellar balance sheet with experienced and heavily invested management at the helm.

Also, the company's foray into India through its $5.7Bn investment in Jio Platforms in April 2020 is a game-changer and key to propelling faster topline growth internationally.

Q2'2020 earnings showed the resiliency of an increasingly diversified ad business, which was up 10% YoY despite the COVID induced drastic cut in ad spend by companies.

The street has been trading Facebook ahead of elections and has myopically underestimated the impact of the company's investment into India.

Source: Seeking Alpha

https://seekingalpha.com/article/437789 ... ent=link-7

[winston]

not vested

Facebook: Facebook's revenue jumped 22% over the previous year to $21.5 billion, also beating analysts' forecasts.

Yet the huge bump in usage that the company experienced early in the pandemic appears to be waning.

Daily and monthly active users in the US and Canada, a core market, declined slightly in the third quarter.

Source: CNN

[winston]

not vested

Facebook (FB)

Facebook reported year-over-year sales growth of 22% to $21.5 billion, with the substantial portion coming from advertising revenue, which also rose 22% to $21.2 billion. Total revenue beat Wall Street consensus estimates by 8.6%.

Earnings climbed 28% from a year prior to $2.71 per share, which crushed analysts’ expectations by 41.9%.

Average daily and monthly active users climbed 12% year-over-year but the figures declined slightly from the second quarter in the U.S, which the company said were elevated due to the pandemic.

Despite the positive report overall, Facebook shares sold off more than 5% Friday as investors worried about fewer users in the U.S. and Canada.

Facebook shares sold off more than 7% Friday as investors worried about fewer users in the U.S. and Canada.

Looking ahead, Facebook expects ad revenue growth will be higher in the fourth quarter as the holiday season approaches.

Indeed, the company anticipates ad revenue may continue to soar through 2021 as the “new normal” sets in and people turn to online commerce.

Wall Street is anticipating revenue will rise 21.5% in the coming quarter, and earnings should climb 9%.

Source: Investor Place

[behappyalways]

Facebook faces U.S. lawsuits that could force sale of Instagram, WhatsApp
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN28J2UL

[behappyalways]

Battle commences
A formidable alliance takes on Facebook
Investors don’t seem to care

Letitia james, New York’s attorney-general, couldn’t be blunter in describing the antitrust case lodged on December 9th against the world’s biggest social network.

“By using its vast troves of data and money Facebook has squashed or hindered what the company perceived as potential threats. They’ve reduced choices for consumers, they stifled innovation and they degraded privacy protections for millions of Americans,” she declared, summarising the accusations.

Forty-five states joined her bipartisan coalition against the giant. Separately, the Federal Trade Commission (ftc) sued Facebook for monopolistic practices in social-networking and demanded remedies including the firm’s break-up.

A few years ago co-ordinated action by 46 states and the ftc that could split Facebook apart was unthinkable, says Lina Khan, an antitrust scholar at Columbia Law School. But the case is about more than narrow competition law.

The controversies around Facebook’s privacy practices, the spread of fake news and conspiracy theories on the platform, and its exploitation by authoritarian regimes mean regulators and politicians are set on forcing change.

Will they succeed? The cases look strong. Experts judge Facebook to be the lowest-hanging antitrust fruit, alongside Google (which America’s Justice Department sued over alleged monopoly abuses in October). Amazon and Apple are in the crosshairs, but those cases will take longer, if they come at all, says an antitrust expert.

The Facebook lawsuits centre on its acquisitions. The firm maintained its monopoly in personal social-networking by systematically buying up potential competitors, both contend—notably Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.

A smoking gun could be Onavo, an Israeli firm Facebook bought in 2013—to protect user data, the firm said. The suits claim it in fact used Onavo to track rival apps’ popularity and select acquisition targets.

Another alleged anti-competitive practice was blocking rival app developers from its platform. As consumer harm is hard to prove against big tech’s mostly free products, the suits try a novel argument: that damage is done to users’ privacy and advertisers’ choice.

Facebook will argue that its market is social media, which is broader and more competitive than social-networking. TikTok, a Chinese-owned short-video app, is now more popular than Instagram among American teenagers. The internal Facebook emails on which the lawsuits hinge hardly paint a picture of a lazy monopolist; Mr Zuckerberg and his lieutenants see competitive threats everywhere.

Facebook can also argue that breaking it up is well-nigh impossible. Last year it started integrating Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger more deeply. And the ftc’s complaint fails to mention it cleared the Instagram and WhatsApp deals. The government “now wants a do-over”, sending a chilling warning to American business that “no sale will ever be final”, Facebook said.

Markets shrugged off the news. Facebook’s shares dipped by 2%, in line with the rest of big tech. Investors either see forced divestitures as unlikely, says Brent Thill of Jefferies, an investment bank—or spy even more money to be made from spin-offs.

Source: The Economist

[winston]

not vested

Facebook: It Will Come Back, Per Diem

Everybody hates Facebook right now. If you have profits, sell now. Then put it on the buy list.

There are reasons the stock is under short-term pressure.

The Federal Trade Commission, and 48 states, filed suit Dec. 9 to make Facebook sell Instagram and Whatsapp, acquisitions the FTC previously approved. It’s part of a global campaign to rein in the power of “Big Tech,” which now threatens even the most powerful governments.

China is rewriting its antitrust rules to go after its Cloud Emperors – Alibaba Group Holding (NASDAQ:BABA), Tencent Group Holding (OTMKTS:TCEHY) and Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU). The west is doing the same against Cloud Czars Facebook, Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL,NASDAQ:GOOG) and Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), whose free and low-cost services have transformed the global economy over the last decade.

The European Union has filed antitrust charges against Amazon over its use of data. India has filed an antitrust suit against Alphabet over Google Pay.

None of these suits ask, let alone answer, the key question Facebook answers. Who, or what, will pay for the clouds?

Facebook’s answer was cash flow, from free ad-supported services. It took a huge risk, but invited the world to join it, with an Open Compute Project to reduce cloud construction costs. The instructions for building a bigger, better, and cheaper cloud, in other words, are freely available.

Did AT&T (NYSE:T) take advantage of this opportunity? No. Did International Business Machines (NYSE:IBM). No. Did Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), HP (NYSE:HPQ) or Dell Technologies (NASDAQ:DELL). No. Neither did any European company or government, despite clouds proving to be the most important infrastructure innovation of this century. Like characters in The Little Red Hen, they waited for the bread to be baked. Now they not only demand to eat it, but to destroy the oven that baked it.

Billions of people who in the 1990s had no communication with the outside world are now part of the global discussion. An Indian farmer making 36,000 rupee, roughly US$487 per year, can now be heard around the world. Without advertising cash flow, Facebook would have to charge for services. The Internet is worthless without the services that run on it.

Why put it on the buy list, then? Because Facebook’s Diem could do the same thing to banks that Facebook did to phone companies in the 2010s.

Diem’s cryptocurrency and its “digital wallet,” Novi, could combine with Kustomer, its latest acquisition, to let anyone become a merchant using WhatsApp for practically nothing.

This is not an innovation. Ant Financial, part-owned by Alibaba, is already doing this.

Developing world phone monopolies charged up to $1/minute for calls less than 30 years ago. Credit networks like Visa (NYSE:V) now charge merchants and customers, huge fees to transact business. Diem can eliminate these settlement charges. Digital currency can transform the developing world and the global economy.

Governments say they’re acting against greedy monopolies in targeting Facebook and the other cloud czars.

They’re really acting against the free Internet and, by extension, billions of people who have benefitted from it. It’s an act of war against the rising prosperity of Asia, Africa, and the global south.

In the long run, it’s doomed to fail.

Source: Investor Place

[winston]

not vested

Not Lookin’ Good

by Shah Gilani

I like Facebook, not just because it has Instagram, WhatsApp, Oculus, and other great properties, but because it has 2.7 billion users – and no lawsuit or court order is going to undermine that monumental block of revenue contributors.

I wouldn’t sell Facebook if I owned it. In fact, if I owned it, or I was looking to buy into it, I’d add shares if I were lucky to get some down at $250, and I’d buy a lot more if the stock dips to $225.

Source: Money Morning