Groupon keeps moving the goalposts, leaving investors scratching their heads
Groupon reported its first quarterly earnings as a public company this week and blew away its numbers — in the sense that it stopped reporting key numbers investors need to assess the health of its business.
Based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), the daily-deals company continues to lose money. But the bigger concern for investors is Groupon keeps changing how it wants to be measured and hiding metrics that point toward a deterioration of … Continue Reading
Groupon reports net loss in first earnings, still doing great if you don’t count what it spends
There were a lot of doubters who said Groupon was nothing more than a Ponzi scheme looking to cash out with an IPO. Groupon just reported its first quarterly earnings as a public company, and did better than many on Wall Street expected. Yet the stock is taking a beating, dropping 15 percent after hours trading.
The daily-deals company announced that revenue and active customers were way up on a year-over-year basis. The company said … Continue Reading
Two Facebook graphs Wall Street analysts and investors should ignore
Wall Street likes data. Annual reports and quarterly reports move markets. If Wall Street could access daily data on the ins-and-outs of a company, it would. Hedge funds have been known to use analysis of satellite imagery of Wal-Mart parking lots to try to get a jump on the markets.
That micro level of analysis isn’t going to be very helpful in predicting Facebook’s future. For example, here are two of the types of charts … Continue Reading
Does former MySpace CEO think Facebook’s stock value will last?
No one knows how hard the mighty can fall quite like Mike Jones. Jones was MySpace’s most recent CEO; his job was to assess a faltering social app and see if it was saveable.
Since Jones saw a once-powerful network through a period of layoffs, restructuring, and an eventual sale to an ad network, we wondered how he felt about the IPO of Facebook. After all, Facebook is the app that nailed shut MySpace’s coffin … Continue Reading
Beware the king: Zuckerberg’s voting power a risk to shareholders
As VentureBeat’s Jolie O’Dell pointed out yesterday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg managed to strike a deal with some key investors and friends that gives him 57 percent of the shareholder voting power. For a public company, it’s an almost unheard of concentration of authority, a troubling sign for those who focus on shareholder rights.
“The public has no say in the control of the board, which in my view is terribly harmful to any notion … Continue Reading
Power play: How Zuckerberg wrested control of Facebook from his shareholders
Mark Zuckerberg controls a majority of Facebook’s voting rights, and will continue to enjoy that control after it goes public, according to an unusual arrangement he struck with some key investors and colleagues among Facebook’s shareholders.
A string of voting arrangements outlined in Facebook’s SEC filing show that some of the company’s most powerful shareholders have ceded their voting rights to Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive. While Zuckerberg only owns 28.2 percent of the Facebook’s … Continue Reading
Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg made $30.9M in 2011
Facebook’s second in command COO Sheryl Sandberg was compensated millions more than any other Facebooker in 2011 — founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg included.
The social network’s leading lady took home $295,833 in base salary, $86,133 in bonus money, and $30.49 million in stock awards (an estimated value) for a grand total of almost $30.9 million in 2011.
The juicy tidbit was unearthed in the executive compensation section of Facebook’s S-1 document, filed Wednesday.
Read … Continue Reading
Facebook says “mobile” is big risk — starting with Android and iOS
Facebook said its users are increasingly using mobile devices, and that this is risky because the social network still hasn’t figured out how it can make money from mobile ads.
A majority of Facebook users still access the site on their personal computers, where Facebook makes a lot of money from ads served on its web pages. However, increasingly, more users are going mobile (indeed, 425 million of them and counting), partly because of Facebook’s … Continue Reading
How “The Hacker Way” helped propel Facebook to market dominance
Facebook's core values include a powerful, results-oriented, anti-theoretical philosophy called "The Hacker Way," according to founder Mark Zuckerberg.
"The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration," Zuckerberg writes. "Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it -- often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo."
Facebook’s monster mobile numbers: Over 425M users across Android, iOS, other platforms
With Facebook’s just-released S-1 filing, we’re getting a better picture of how the company is competing in the mobile sphere. We already knew the company had more than 800 million registered members, and now we know it had more than 425 million monthly active mobile users in December 2011, a stunning accomplishment.
“Mobile is really coming into its own right now, and Facebook is going to play heavily in this space,” Altimeter Group analyst Rebecca … Continue Reading
Facebook user data: 845M monthly users, 2.7B daily likes & comments
Facebook filed for an initial public offering today, and included an updated report on the giant social network’s user and usage data.
The company’s total number of active monthly users, which it defines as registered Facebook users who have logged in and visited the site via web browser/mobile device (including interactions from third-party sites), was 845 million as of December 31, 2011. That’s up by about 45 million since the company’s last update at September’s … Continue Reading
Facebook made $1B on $3.7B in revenue last year
Facebook has been on a rocket ride to social network dominance. Now we know that it’s making some money from that ride.
The social-networking company made $3.7 billion in revenue in 2011, according to the S-1 documents it filed with the SEC today. Facebook filed the documents as the first step in going public. No starting price has yet been named, but Facebook said it expects to raise $5 billion in the IPO. The transaction … Continue Reading
Mark Zuckerberg owns 28.2% of Facebook, Peter Thiel has 2.5%
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg owns 28.2 percent of the company, according to Facebook's just-released IPO S-1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Facebook's initial public offering is one of the most hyped technology events of the year, and the company is expected to debut on the stock market in May. Its stock ticker symbol will be "FB." The company has not yet named a starting price has yet been named, but Facebook said in the filing that it expects to raise at least $5 billion in the IPO.
Dylan’s Desk: 6 things you should know about the Facebook IPO
If Facebook files its paperwork for an initial public offering this week, as many expect it to do, we’ll be on the road to one of the biggest tech IPOs in recent history.
The offering will probably raise $10 billion in cash for the company and will value Facebook at somewhere between $75 and $100 billion, making founder Mark Zuckerberg, who holds an estimated 24 percent of the company, a billionaire many times over. That … Continue Reading
Facebook said to be filing $5B IPO, Morgan Stanley selected to take lead
Social network king Facebook will likely file its first papers with regulators on Wednesday morning for a $5 billion initial public offering, “sources close to the deal” have told Reuters subsidiary IFR.
We heard at the end of last week that the social network could file papers for its initial public offering as soon as Wednesday, so it’s not unexpected that more details are leaking like a well-worn faucet. The timing aligns with a recent … Continue Reading
The 3 Facebook IPO risk factors that matter
When Facebook’s S-1 filing comes out (which could be as soon as tomorrow, if you believe the Wall Street Journal), we’ll see a lot of risks in it.
The S-1 is the first and most significant document that a company fills out, and the Securities and Exchange Commission publishes, prior to an initial public offering. If it’s typical, we’ll see many boilerplate risks, such as an earthquake wiping out Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, … Continue Reading
Obama calls on Congress to pass bill aimed at helping startups
A day after showing his techno savvy with an appearance in a Google+ hangout, President Obama is calling on Congress to pass new legislation that would aid startups, and put them at the center of an agenda, “Startup America,” focused on creating new jobs.
“The president has made small businesses and particularly start-ups a key aspect of his economic growth agenda because he understands how much the newest and fastest-growing small businesses drive job growth … Continue Reading
Facebook to file papers for IPO as soon as Wednesday
The Facebook IPO cometh.
The social network could file papers for its initial public offering as soon as Wednesday, according to sources.
The burgeoning business is exploring a valuation between $75 and $100 billion — numbers that match a smattering of previous reports — and will likely select Morgan Stanley as the lead underwriter for the IPO, sources told the Wall Street Journal.
A VentureBeat source said that the filing is imminent, but did not … Continue Reading
Guidewire Software seeks $115M IPO, debuts tomorrow
Insurance software company Guidewire will begin trading publicly on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) tomorrow. It has raised $115 million in the initial public offering by selling 8.85 million shares at $13 apiece. That’s well above the 7.5 million shares at $10 to $12 that the company had planned.
Guidewire provides software targeted at insurance companies that provides property, workers’ compensation and casualty insurance to its customers. Its software product includes a web-based claims … Continue Reading
Mobile processor company Audience files for $75M IPO
Audience, a Silicon Valley-based company that counts Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen (pictured) as a backer, has filed for an initial public offering.
In its IPO filing, the company stated its plans to raise $75 million in the offering.
In official documents filed today with the SEC, the company stated, “Our products enable a more consistent voice and audio experience, regardless of the use case or surrounding noise environment.”
Audience will trade on the NASDAQ; the … Continue Reading
