They're currently priced at 3.5x annualized revenue. If you assume they could capture 20% of that revenue consistently, that's 20x annualized profits (equivalent to 13ish years of profit on this basis).

To me, this seems close to the max price I'd value Meta, given the headwinds to growth they face.

The inability to grow via acquisition seems like a big hurdle -- that's what I was hinting at with "regulatory pressure".

To me, I think the bull case is that they come out with an Apple-tier-quality headset, thereby begetting and capturing the mainstream headset market from a data privacy point of view, and that this new market is additive or multiplicative to their core ads business, rather than cannibalizing (an idea that is, itself, suspect).

IDK. If I bought at $90 (which I didn't, somewhat foolishly in hindsight), I'd feel pretty comfortable selling at the current after-market price.

Oh definitely, we are not disagreeing.

I have two rules personally - don't invest in highly speculative assets, don't invest short term.

So I am out of $META in general, as it fails the test on both prongs for me. It is highly volatile at the moment, and if I think 10 years into the future, the only reason I can think of for them being around is "network effects". Compared to something like $NVDA, that is just a weak argument in my opinion.

Yes! Sorry didn't mean to sound like I was disagreeing, I was more just riffing on what you said. More riffing below :)

I think $META will continue to win the "social network" game on any computing platform into the foreseeable future, as that's their "unreasonable" competency. i.e. Even if Apple wins the VR hardware game, Meta has an unfair advantage at developing the most popular social media app on that platform.

However, I struggle to see a narrative where the capturable value of that social media landscape increases at growth stock rates into the distant future, given the fact that any VR winner other than Meta is liable to create a more-private-by-default computing platform than previous platforms of computing (this seems to be a secular trend).

So, even if Meta controls the same percentage of the "social media advertising" market into the transition to VR, I could see this being a smaller TAM than "social media advertising" is at (now-peak) web 2.0.

That is, it seems like their only hope to remain a growth stock to become the "Apple of VR", which seems to be squarely outside their circle of competency.

All in all, I'd agree with you and put META in the "too hard" / "probably not" category at current price. Although, even with these uncertainties, $90 was a no-brainer in retrospect (even assuming permanently-flat revenue). With perfect hindsight, I would have bought then and probably sold at $120, although that's all hot air (X

I think the question of "what is the value of non-targeted ads / contextual ads", "what is the risk of an aging population", "how to price tiktok risk" are all also a part of it.

The issue I have with them is that social media is quite a shaky thing on the long run - every generation is pretty much resetting the whole game, so to speak (i.e. your network effects might matter for existing groups but not for the new ones).

This, combined with economic uncertainty, makes me think "if the stock tanks for a relatively long period of time, what is the inherent value that gives me trust that they will recover?"

I think even for pure software companies, META is quite susceptible to disruption in this regard.

Not to mention, if Zuck decided to double down on his doubling down, he could have. Then we would have seen even lower numbers than 90. Since unlike other companies, META lacks checks and balances, that is also another point to be worried about, if you want to invest for long term.

They just won in court like two days ago against the FTC to go forward with Within's acquisition.

I'm more talking about the fact that, if there were a new Instagram or WhatsApp for VR that threatened their social media hegemony, Meta would most certainly be blocked from acquiring it. Especially because it seems the current FTC regrets that previous FTC administrations green-lit the WhatsApp and Instagram acquisitions.

The Within case isn't informative, IMO -- Within wasn't building social media applications. It was more a case of an acquihire. The VR ecosystem is too early to have an Instagram/WhatsApp moment, yet.

Fair, I agree they probably couldn't buy something like Clubhouse.

I brought up Within because it was talked about a lot on fin-Twit as proof/sign they can't M&A anymore.