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Comment by skizm | Hacker News Reader

Facebook's revenue up 35% year over year: -26% (P/E ~16)

Amazon's revenue up 15% year over year: +12% (P/E 60+)

I don't get the stock market. Facebook can simply turn on billions in revenue whenever they want still with WhatsApp, which has north of 2 billion MAU, and has not been monetized at all yet. Facebook is a reverse meme stock.

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The current stock price of the company is theoretically the present value of future cashflows. For example, if you had project this revenue growth a year ago, you should have bought Facebook stock and not Amazon and you would have bet correctly. Facebook stock is up 21% from 2/1/2021 to 2/1/2022 whereas Amazon stock is down 9.54% during that same time period.

It's not just about how well they are doing, it's about how well they are doing compared to how well they were expected to be doing. If a bunch of people bought Facebook stock last year based on expectations that revenue would go up 45% year over year, then they probably over-valued the stock.

> I don't get the stock market.

There's nothing to get, it's just gambling for rich people.

This. The market is just a bunch of random ppl and robots who are have different motivations and opinions. Some are long term oriented, some just wanna make a quick buck. It’s just a chaotic casino.

WhatsApp has competitors that in Telegram/Signal etc. that are financially stable, offer more features and security, and with the mood of the government right now they would absolutely be prevented from purchasing. They would destroy WhatsApp in weeks if they did that.

Amazon is fine and doesn't need to grow. Facebook is in danger and growth was already priced in. Now it's not.

heck, soms European politicians are calling for a split of WhatsApp from Facebook because Facebook did not honor their end of the deal when they bought WhatsApp.

fb hilariously claims that this would be impossible, which is kind of proving they didn't hold up their end of the bargain.

Facebook's guidance was shit. Amazon's was not.

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