Facebook and the starting gun for the Bubbletime

We were asked last week by the Grauniad to comment on the Facebook IPO valuation (see here), and to contrast it with Google, as excitement increases (or maybe not). The valuation I will deal with later, but the compare and contrast with Google is very interesting. In a nutshell, at IPO Google:

- Had revenues of c $1.5bn and had been profitable for several years, making c£350m in the pre-IPO year
- Was a $23bn IPO, ie a ratio of about 15 of IPO $ value/$ revenue, and sold c 8% of its shares at IPO
- Had c 50% of the search market share of about 1bn people online at the time, and was achieving about $2-3 annual revenue per user (ARPU)
- If you assume that translates into about 500 million users, Google's IPO value per user is about $50
- Had been going about 7 years

Facebook is something like this (considerable connjecture, as its reported finances vary widely):

- Revenues of between $2 and $4bn in 2011, profits between breakeven and $1bn (depending on who you read)
- Is seeking a $80 - 100bn IPO, ie a ratio of between c 25 and 50 (on $4bn and $2bn revenue estimates respectively) IPO $ value/$ revenue, and will sell c 10% of its shares
- Which translates into a c $2.5 - $5 ARPU of current users
- Has c 800 million registered users, of about 2bn people online - about 40% of all users - at $100bn that is a $125 per-user valuation
- Has been going for c 8 years

So, Facebook and Google have quite a few similarities at IPO, but there are 4 glaring differences:

- Whichever way you look at it, Facebook's valuation as a ratio of its business fundamentals is 2-3 times higher than Google's
- Facebook's user base is expected to grow by c 25% - 33% next year and revenues are expected to grow by a similar amount. Google more than doubled its user transactions and revenues in the year after IPO.
- The ratio of IPO value to user ARPU was c 16, for Google, c 30 - 50 for Facebook
- Arguably, Google faced less opposition from elsewhere (privacy etc) that could impact the business model profitability.

My take is that Google IPO'd earlier in its growth trajectory, and was able to more easily "grow into" its IPO value both because it had a lower valuation as a proportion of its fundamentals, and it had more growth in it as less users were connected at the time and revenue is not bounded by registered users but by number of searches per user.

Now, as to the Facebook valuation - is $100bn overvalued? The answer is "what do you need to believe to get to $100bn". If you believe it is worth $100bn, then you need to believe that:

- That the ARPU of c $2.5 - $5 per user can be made to fund a per-user valuation of $125.
- Google had $2-3 ARPU on $23m valuation, and ARPU is c $20 today - so Google hit its numbers. Do you believe Facebook can make a similar jump in ARPU?
- There is probably about a maximum doubling of Facebook users possible, so you have to believe by far the bulk of this growth is in revenue per user from Ads, games etc.
- That Facebook's business model is very scalable, and that there are better economies of scale in Social Networks than in Search so profits are long term sustainable.

So, what do you believe.....

This is a classic dotcom IPO play (small number of shares on sale, lots of hype, very high valuations). Very few make the grade. Google managed it, and more, and today has a comfortable $150bn market cap - but Facebook has set itself a far higher set of bars. In other words a lot more things have to go right, for a long time, for Facebook.

The really inteesting thing will be when Facebook's numbers are published, and every analyst worth their salt will try and work out how the above will be achieved.

But one thing is for certain - this is the starting gun for the Social Media bubble, as we predicted a year ago (see the Broadstuff Bubble-O-Meter above, we started it about this time last year), and we shall now see the extraordinary madness of crowds in spades - as Chris Dixon predicts:

- a bunch of second-tier social media companies go public to satisfy investor demand for "social media allocations" (facebook's reportedly small float of 5b will make this more likely)
- high private valuations for social media companies will last at least another year
- the press will write thousands of breathless stories that make it seem like the future of western culture depends on new facebook revenue streams (see coverage of google's business model post-IPO)
- facebook will continue to do small talent acquisitions until they have their "Google Video" moment and then like all mature tech companies will start acquiring real businesses for 1b+ valuations.
- facebook will - in the eyes of the press - go from darling to "evil" over the next 5 years. (again, see google coverage). (My note - it is already see as more evil than Google ever has been)
- the next 1-2 years will mark the end of this "Patterson cycle", after that, really interesting innovation will start gestating for the next cycle.

The next post will be on the Patterson cycle and the role of Bubbles...stay tuned.