Tuesday, as investors anticipated what Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, would say at his TechCrunch Disrupt appearance, the stock price for Facebook climbed and then and held on to a 3.3% gain by the close of the regular session. An hour after the close, Mark took the stage and fielded questions.
The first set of questions focused on the stock price. Mark didn't hesitate to accept that it was disappointing to see it so low, but then, in what always seems like the same breath, began to reaffirm that it doesn't change the long term mission of the company. He insisted that revenue growth is not taking a back seat to the mission of delivering great services to the users, and that he realizes the importance of balancing the two.
In his answer about generating revenue from mobile, he stated that Facebook is seeing greater revenue growth from it's sponsored stories then it ever saw from the right side ads on the desktop site. (A question about accidental clicks comes to mind but was not addressed, nor was user satisfaction.)
Mark also fielded a question about employee moral in regards to the stock price and it's effect on employee stock options. He indicated that the lower stock price provided an opportunity for potential employees who are believers in the mission of Facebook to apply now, or, if an existing employee, to double down.
As for products in the pipeline, Mark clearly stated the position that Facebook will not be going into hardware anytime soon. There is no Facebook phone is in the works. Facebook is, however, looking into other ways to monetize both desktop and mobile. They are very happy with the native Apple iOS version of the Facebook app and will be continuing to improve it, and they are currently working on building the native Andriod version. Without specifying a date, Mark said it would be out soon. When pressed, he said "when it's ready and hopefully not before." Additionally, Mark indicated that "search" as a product is something that they have beem working on, but gave only an example of how it would be used to promote Facebook's mission of openness and social connectivity.
As a point of trivial interest that illustrates Marks understanding of how importent mobile is to Facebook's future, he said that the Letter to Investors that came with the S-1 filing was writen by him on his mobile device.
Everything that I covered above, and details that I left out, resulted in an additional after hours gain of about 3.45%. Current asking price is $20.10. You would think that this would change my opinion of Facebook; hardley! In all honesty, I am not one of those people that believes that Facebook will go the way of MySpace. I believe Facebook does have a long term story. However, I do not believe that Facebook deserves it's current valuation. I am fairly certain that it will continue to move positively the next couple of days, if not longer, but my value analysis of the financials does not make me feel confident with the idea of taking a bullish stance on it just yet. That's my opinion, you can take it or leave it. Disclaimer: See bottom of page. http://investorsopinion.blogspot.com/
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