I have been told “nobody uses Facebook”.
Last quarter, 1.88 Bn “nobody” used Facebook daily.
Lots of interesting data points and snippets on this call. Here are my notes.
2/ Numbers in this quarter was a thing of beauty (perhaps applies to all big tech). They are making quite a mockery of “law of large numbers”.
FB’s 2016 *annual* topline was $27 Bn. Wow!
Acceleration in VR (other)+ overall revenue growth+ operating leverage make you drool.
3/ DAU +8% YoY; MAU +10%; Family DAP +15%
# of impressions +12%, avg price/ad +30%
Zuck highlighted three topics on the call:
I. AR/VR
II. Social Commerce
III. Creator Economy
4/ AR/VR:
“AR/VR are going to enable a deeper sense of presence in social connection than any existing platform.”
“The most used apps are social, which fits our original theory for why we wanted to build this platform in the first place”
Still early days
5/ “in virtual reality, I think you need to get to a high-quality wireless experience. In augmented reality, you're going to really need a pair of glasses that look like normal looking glasses”
6/ Social Commerce:
“more than 1 billion people visit Marketplace each month.”
250 mn MAU Shops visitors.
Business messaging grew by 40% over the last year.
7/ Creator economy:
Zuck seems to be all-in on creator economy.
I prefer the all-in approach. Make everything available. See which one works better and then double down on it. Harder to predict which one is the best approach without iteration.
8/ On personalized ads: “We're doing a huge amount of work to prepare”
Sheryl is making a case for personalized ads here. I find it ironic how much misinformation other people propagate on Facebook and then blame Facebook for misinformation.
9/ Advertising 101: it’s all relative game.
If post-IDFA, FB’s data points yield better result vs other platforms, that would be a gift FB didn’t ask for but will gleefully accept nonetheless.
10/ “We've also seen strong growth across ads in Facebook Watch, which now has more than 1.25 billion people visiting every month”.
People watch “Facebook Watch”? Huh, that’s news to me as well.
11/ Outlook: expect Q2 to post similar growth as Q1, but expect material deceleration in 2H. Ad revenue will be primarily driven by price, not # of ad impressions.
12/ 2021 opex outlook increased from $68-73 Bn to $70-73 Bn. Capex outlook declined from $21-23 Bn to $19-21 Bn
Is engagement going to be problem post-pandemic? It’s a headwind, but nothing dramatic expected in 2021.
On IDFA: “the impact on our own business, we think, will be manageable” (this is Wehner,so when he says “manageable”, it probably means much better)
14/ Facebook does not optimize its feed to increase your time spent on the app.
15/ Zuck is a 36-year old centi-billionaire who was deeply reminded recently that the future of his empire is still somewhat beholden to the whims of Apple. I expect Zuck to go really deep into AR/VR. If this stuff had even 10% prob. of outsized success, it's now 40-60%.
End/ Thanks to @theTIKR for the quick upload of transcripts (no affiliation)
By now, it is no surprise that Amazon would post another Amazing quarter, but the growth/margin in international (+60%) and ads/other (+77%) still raised my eyebrows.
Let’s look at segment by segment and some highlights from the call.
2/ But first here’s the breakdown of revenue by segment (both product and geography)
The real surprise was how international operating margin increased from -2.6% in 1Q’20 to +4.1% in 1Q’21. That’s +670 bps margin improvement vs NA’s +260 bps during the same time.
3/ One of my concerns was whether Amazon can mimic its success in NA to international markets as well.
Looking at the operating leverage and the pace of improvement, this looks much better than I anticipated.
Shopify is a special company trying to solve the ABC of commerce on the internet for everyone. And it is run by deeply competent leader(s).
I’m not a shareholder, so it must be true.
Here are my highlights from the latest quarter.
2/ “A platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses it, exceeds the value of the company that creates it. Then it’s a platform.”-Bill Gates
Merchants generated $307B, and its partners made $12B. SHOP’s revenue in 2020 was $2.9B. Like I said, it’s a special company.
3/ Both GMV and revenue more than doubled as broader e-commerce penetration remains elevated.
Subscription Solution +71% YoY
Merchant solution +137% YoY
Gross Payments Volume (GPV) 46% of GMV (vs 42% in 1Q’21)
If Ben Graham popularized "value investing", Phil Fisher was the OG of "growth investing". Buffett even characterized his philosophy as "85% Graham and 15% Fisher".
Just read a good piece on Fisher. Some quick notes.
2/8 Here's how Fisher defined "growth company". The last point really stands out:
"the advantage cannot be meaningfully gauged with numbers and mathematical formulas."
3/8 "no investment philosophy, unless it is just a carbon copy of someone else’s approach, develops in its complete form in any day or year. In my own case, it grew over a considerable period of time"
This is Bezos' last letter as CEO of Amazon. I have been saying this for a while: Buffett and Bezos are two best business writers of our time.
It truly is a fitting letter to end Bezos' tenure. Here are my highlights.
2/ "...more than 7/8ths of the shares, representing $1.4 trillion of wealth creation, are owned by others. Who are they? ...they’re Mary and Larry, who sent me this note out of the blue just as I was sitting down to write this shareholder letter"
3/ One of the best arguments in favor of capitalism is this opportunity for Mary and Larry to participate in the wealth creation machine by an inventive, ambitious, and motivated strangers.
It's not just family office and hedge funds. Let's not forget the "Mary and Larry".
1/ Thread: Market-Expected Return on Investment (MEROI)
@mjmauboussin and Dan Callahan published their new piece today on MEROI. Regular followers know I'm a big fan of Mauboussin and a big believer of expectations investing approach.
Let's dig into the new piece.
2/ A company's valuation is just sum of two things:
Steady-State Value (SSV) + Present Value of Growth Opportunities (PVGO)
SSV = NOPAT capitalized by Cost of Capital
PVGO depends on three things...
3/
a. the spread between ROIC and Cost of Capital
b. how much a company can invest
c. how long a company can find value-creating opportunities
Calculating SSV is more straight forward, but PVGO is quite tricky and is riddled with many assumptions/forecasts.