Facebook is buying What’s App for freakin’ 19 billion dollars.
Such a valuation, puts What’s App above companies like Ralph Lauren and Cambell Soup. With just 55 employees, it’s fair to say this little, stupid, company just hit the internet lottery.
Tell your stubborn kids to take computer science classes in college and ditch finance.
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Its all funny-money, so why not? Its a mad, mad world. Maybe you are correct and Angies List is worth a gajillion dollars (in funny money).
Too late (as to the kids).
And by the way telling kids what to take in college doesn’t work-especially if they get a full ride. I had one who passed on Princeton (he got in via athletics and academics) to attend an SEC school on an athletic scholarship.
hope (s)he’s a Gator
Is FB a short here? Hard to believe that one of these bloated buys will not hit the stock. How much cash do they have?
Remember when Instagram was expensive?
This will go down as one of the worst acquisitions ever. An app that allows you to send instant messages and SMS messages? There’s absolutely nothing special here except for the number of people who use it. How many different instant messaging platforms have we seen over the last 20 years? This one’s somehow worth $19 billion? I guess FB is really getting desperate in finding ways to grow its userbase if it has to drop 19 billion to acquire an instant message / SMS app.
i don’t find any madness in that watsup which is the mainstram instant message system in the world ( everybody use it .. everyday .. very often ..) it’s valued more then Ralph Lauren at the moment…. don’t even find his “business” ( instant messaging for millions of people from all age status and country ) is stupid .. don’t understand your post.. :-/
btw if 4 persons in a 100mq lab find a controlled atomic fusion “special formula” , they will be instantly valued multiple time the value of ralph lauren and watsup ..
fb + watsup = good fraction of the power that’s in the information of what the whole plebs and mass people of the earth do think and exchange … and eventually direct them .. that’s bit more then 19blln..
You’re delusional.
There is no way What’s App is worth 19 billion. You’ve lost your fucking mind.
lol…old school responce
They have 419 million users paying a dollar a year for for the app.
I paid $1 bc my fiance lives in London. By the time this deal settle I will be married and have no need for this app… especially when it is being attacked with Euro bride ads I will accidentally click and curse. Interwebs fast becoming one giant ad orgy.
Got some young guns around here that apparently never ran a lemonade stand. The fluke generation believes the hype.
lol
my man – is not me , is the market that make the values . i would add in that FB is not the last thing born in this world .
Good point, bood. I wonder what the cash flow multiple is? Then again, look at the prices paid for Internet start-ups back in the day. Mark Cuban’s lotto hit comes to mind.
The question is, will this be Facebook’s You Tube, or their Motorola Mobility?
i guess fb have something hot in mind ( to develope in these years , the years of mass digital comunication spread , now goin mobile ), there’s a lot of value in the most important and widespread mobile msg system on earth . 19bill covers more or less proprietary idea , development , app servers , subscribers portfolio ( growing ..) and x years of business income . not sure why fb pays 19bl then go and screw up over a deal he strongly wanted 😉 . I’d say 19bl is appropriate , its a digital giant buyn a mobile giant service which he did not have . we’re talking very big numbers of costumers..growing..
reading that someone think that watsup is worth 1bl .. (.. in a deal with FB? serious?? ) .. and reading that it’s me that lost my mind , it made me a good laugh .no offense for anyone .
Bood
What do you really know about anything? Serious question
about what , my sir ?
about life in general .. or markets , cash flow statements ? estimates of values and business? digital businesses ?
with all respect! : about anything is vague sir. But I know for sure that thinking 1bl for watsup ( offer coming from FB.. ) doesn’t sounds right . sounds much more like a discount gift which doesn’t happen to big companies of wall street ( apart msft buyin Nokia last year for a fraction of his value , but there was some work by msft behind , making possible those valuations ). by the way , sir , and and based on my knwolemonade I’m up for 2014
sorry : about what , my sir ?
about life in general .. or markets , cash flow statements ? estimates of values and business? digital businesses ?
with all respect! : about anything is vague sir. But I know for sure that thinking 1bl for watsup ( offer coming from FB.. ) doesn’t sounds right . sounds much more like a discount gift which doesn’t happen to big companies of wall street ( apart msft buyin Nokia last year for a fraction of his value , but there was some work by msft behind , making possible those valuations ). by the way , sir , and and based on my knwolemonade I’m up for 2014
If they would be allowed, they should have gone after WeChat – which is getting more and more similar to Facebook – and got access to China’s 300 million users.
Wait til these fuckers start seeing the bats…
More than just a little stupid. $1-$3 B would have been plenty. But this is probably about crushing upstart competition and acquiring subscribers.
Have we reached a bubble in this sector ?
The crony capitalism has a stench coming out of Silicon Valley like no other place.
so they’re valued just 3 times their annual subscribers income ? serious man ?
What WHat! Oh. I heard bubble. Woke up for a sec
You said it yourself…what price do you pay for a winner? Any.
Facebook wants to lock the internet down.
I am a software engineer and I don’t have a billion dollars… I feel bad =/
I have a 100 Trillion zimbabwe note
Somehow this angers me more than the Bitcoin bubble, partly because the sin is being committed by a high profile company, legitimizing the insanity.
Get angry. this populace needs to start getting angry
Anger is good young jedi
China just puked the futures…carry on
Grandma is busy baking fake fortune cookies. All is well.
under 49 pmi
eurozone order demand falls
Bull market though (cough)
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice … If you needed yet another reminder that we are in the midst of a huge equity bubble, this is it. And it WILL end badly.
TWTR has a market cap of $20B. If What’s App is worht $19B then what the heck is TWTR worth? Certainly not $20B, something much higher.
This also begs the question, why didn’t FB just buy TWTR? This What’s App deal is uber retarded.
Corporate malfeasance. Dereliction of duties.
If I held a decent size stake in FB, I would sue.
There is absolutely no way that the owners of WhatsApp would not have settled for a lot less than $19B.
Did they offer $15B and were rejected?
Was there a competing offer for just under $19B?
This is criminal for sure.
Do I sound angry? I’m not. I don’t really give a shit.
In the old days they called it a Ponzi scheme.
While the price is certainly much steeper than the Instagram purchase, it seemed rationale from a long term perspective. Whatsapp was going to be a major force in the mobile messaging dept. Facebook just eliminated the threat.
It could be likened to Blockbuster buying netflix in its infancy. You never know.
But they are buying it at a fully mature valuation. It’s madness.
Do they not realize they are acting out the cliche of an overbloated frothy epoch?
(yes I used epoch)
It’s as if someone gave them a list of ‘things leading to a superpower culture top’ And they checked it off
brings back the bad old days of CMGI ICGE XLA CMRC etal
FB short case just got better with this doggled-boone. After hours tanking shows what a great move the Suck made.
Commence final phase of Dotcom Bubble 2.0. But remember the greatest gains and steepest ascents of stocks are in the final phase of bubbles. See equity returns from 12/31/98 – 3/1/00. Don’t be a hero and try to call the stop or short it. You’ll go broke doing that.
Being a banker at Goldman Sachs still pays higher than the 99.9% of all computer scientists and software engineers except for the 0.1% that hit the internet lottery
Excellent point. Sometimes I need to be reminded of such realities.
Yes, like of all the people who try to be music stars or professional athletes, only a small percentage hit that jackpot.
Of course in some professions there is no jackpot at all, just comfortable survival at best. Such is life.
Ben Affleck, My hero:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZhPiYA9PNk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12H2ajBXGlE&list=PLaV_QpNqm4vOhvpSFuVw3CAec0tR0Yclh
All reminds me of the infomercial classified ad guy
“I made millions. By placing these tiny ads. In hundreds of newspapers. Across the country. Everyone can place these tiny ads” (excited infomercial voice)
“Tiny ads” are not the savior, printed, Or, mobile
I’m very curious as to what the strategy is here. IPO play via a spinoff later? Integration of the technology into FB’s platform? Tax loss strategy while taking out a competitor (and non compete clause to the prior owner?) for a small loss to prevent another TWTR type scenario? Cash out equity plan to service the debt via the earnings and return he capital to do another deal? Zuckerberg legally laundering money from FB to an old friend through an ill advised transaction? Plan to convert whatsapp into a $705 a month membership instantly multiplying the earnings several times by aggressive monetization?
$5-7* /mo