Facebook: Simply Unstoppable

seekingalpha2021-06-29

Summary The #StopHateforProfit Campaign, antitrust allegations, Apple IDFA issue, and a host of other historical issues have not stopped the social media giant and will not stop it. Despite an ...

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Disclaimer: Investing carries risk. This is not financial advice. The above content should not be regarded as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation on acquiring or disposing of any financial products, any associated discussions, comments, or posts by author or other users should not be considered as such either. It is solely for general information purpose only, which does not consider your own investment objectives, financial situations or needs. TTM assumes no responsibility or warranty for the accuracy and completeness of the information, investors should do their own research and may seek professional advice before investing.

Comments

zaiz
2022-02-11
zaiz
Nice
VinkaloZendo
2021-09-02
VinkaloZendo
Agreed
NgKenny
2021-07-07
NgKenny
Nice
Meshaarias72
2021-07-06
Meshaarias72
Like n comment pls
- Sucrammis:
  Nice
Chiweii
2021-07-05
Chiweii
Worthy stock but overvalue at the moment
- O_Honeydew:
  good
- Meshaarias72:
  Y
TaiWoeiHaur
2021-07-02
TaiWoeiHaur
Up

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That, we shall leave to you.\n\nnemke/E+ via Getty Images\nInvestment Thesis\nFacebook (FB) has had a volatile trading period the past few years with a general uptrend, delivering shareholders nice returns whilst subjecting them to a few major dips which presented investors an opportunity for a steal. Despite the controversy and headline risks every now and then, the company has been able to battle through them and emerge ever so stronger. The company’s financials have been holding up and shows no sign of stoppage anytime soon. In a time as such, with significant uncertainty in the macro environment and inflation fears creeping up, we believe that shifting some of your assets to high cashflow generating companies is a wise strategy that will pay off. Growth and value are 2 different things, and there still exists growth companies that are undervalued and can still generate substantial cashflow, and we believe Facebook is one of them. The company also remains to be one of the more attractive blue-chip stocks compared to the others in the FAANG. We employ a 3–5-year outlook and have been bullish since USD$200/share. Let’s Begin!\nWhat is Facebook\nKnown to all, Facebook is a social media giant with a family of products including the likes of Facebook, Instagram,WhatsApp, Messenger, and now Oculus. The firm essentially has a stronghold in the social media industry and has an impressive DAP of2.72 BN as of Q1’21and MAP of 3.45 BN.\n(Source:FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nThe world has7.874 BNpeople as of the time of this writing and that would mean that 43.8% of all the people in the world use some form of product from Facebook’s portfolio in the past 30 days. On a daily basis, 34.5% of the people in the world use it. If that isn’t a sticky service, nothing really is. If we were to focus on the usage of the Facebook app solely, 23.8% of the world logs into the app daily based on DAUs.\nThe firm was founded in 2004 and generates the majority of their revenue from advertisements. If you have watched the social dilemma on Netflix, you would realize that Facebook’s real customer isn’t everyday users. Instead, users are the product, and they are being sold to advertisers. The company has created such an engaging and sticky service that users are more than happy to be using their apps, despite knowing that their data is being sold from one company to another. As appalling as it is, they’re indifferent to it all and still find the value in using the company’s products on a daily basis – keeping in touch with distant relatives, chatting with friends, staying up to date with the latest fashion trends and news… (According to the Pew Research Center, more than a 1/3 of US adults say they get their news regularly from Facebook)\n(Source:Pew Research Center)\nTo Facebook, this is equally as good as the more users, the wider the ‘product’ base that they have to offer their customers - advertisers. Advertisers are also indifferent to how Facebook attains its data, so long as Facebook’s targeting metrics and trackers are working well, the more likely it is that they are able to generate conversions. The more conversions, the more sales for them, the more ads they continue to pay for, the more revenue Facebook generates. Win-Win-Win, their apps are the bait, and the product (users), customers (advertisers), and supplier (Facebook), all walk away winners. It’s a remarkable business model that has stood the test of time and no matter the amount of controversy around the business, founders, and its practices, it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and for one simple reason: Users likely can’t do without Facebook’s products whether they are willing to admit it or not.\nWhen we look back in the past to reflect on how the #StopHateForProfit Campaign turned out for the company, it is apparent that the impact it had on the top and bottom line were both minimal. The boycott was one that arose due to Facebook’s bad hate speech regulations and policing, and because of the laissez-faire attitude toward posts from then President, Donald Trump. More than 1000 companies publicly committed to boycotting the social media giant in June/July (coinciding with end Q2 and start Q3) and many of the top 100 advertisers based on ad spend such as Nike, Adidas, Puma, Coca-Cola, all revised their budgets downwards.\nDespite this, Facebook beat on Q2 earnings and saw an increase of 10.7% YOY. In its forward guidance, the company also announced that for July, they were anticipating a slowdown in YoY growth of 17% but was still due to see a 10% increase. They alsoanticipatedthe slowdown in growth to last through till October. However, the company did not attribute this slowdown to the boycott specifically but to 3 other major headwinds. With the benefit of hindsight, we can now see that even for Q3’20, the firm saw an impressive 21.6% rise in its top line, with the bottom line still registering a 12.2% improvement in NPM for Q2’20 YoY and a 200 bps NPM improvement in Q3.\nThe results are clear and indicative of a few things. The boycott by the largest companies did little to Facebook’s financial story as they still managed to register growth and did not see significant pullbacks that were material. This can be tied to the fact that most of Facebook’s advertisers are SMBs. Although certain few SMBs did join the boycott, most didn’t, and the firm still had their impressive 9 million + customer base to rely on. If anything, this also suggests that despite what any SMB stands for and whether they agree with a social cause or not, it is hard for them to find alternatives that they can shift to on a similar pricing scale. Big brands can easily pivot to other advertisements such as TV and radio commercials but SMBs simply can’t because of smaller budgets. Lastly, it is now clear that the campaign affected Facebook’s reputation more so than it did its cashflow.\nRisks\nOther risks that the company may face would be future antitrust lawsuits. As it is, the company is already facing allegations of being a monopoly based on their aggressive acquisitive history having acquired more than90 other companiessince inception. They were alsofined US$5 BNby the FTC in 2019 and were required to adopt their policies and employ new protections for the users and their data that has been shared.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nThough representative of a historic penalty and the largest ever imposed on a company for violating user’s privacy rights, the US$5BN was a drop in the bucket for the giant that went on to generate US$70+ BN dollars for the year.\nThe current issues that they have with Apple’s new iOS changes and the IDFA implications are also likely not going to have a substantial impact on the firm. The Identifier for Advertisers [IDFA] is a random device identifier assigned by Apple to a user's device. Advertisers use this to track data so they can deliver customized advertising on mobile. With the new iOS changes, Apple essentially programmed it such that each app that wants to use these identifiers will have to ask users to opt in for tracking when the app is first launched. If users opt out, the app can’t track certain data and Facebook will have a smaller database of points to rely upon. As consumer preferences change, so will Facebook’s targeting that relies on IDFAs get worse and less effective due to outdated data points.\nAccording to aCNBC article:\n\n Most critically at stake for Facebook is what’s known as view-through conversions. This metric is used by ad-tech companies to measure how many users saw an ad, did not immediately click on it, but later made a purchase related to that ad.”\n\nWhen the conversion is made later on, the data IDFA for that particular user is then shared by the retailer to Facebook which is then used by the company to see if it matches the IDFA of the user who saw the ad. If they pair, it indicates that the ad was useful in generating a conversion. This data performance is then relayed to advertisers so that they can tweak their ad strategies accordingly. Withas much as 96% of usersanticipated to opt out of tracking on all apps, this would mean that mobile ads on 3rdparty apps may no longer be as useful if Facebook cannot really judge its effectiveness anymore. The more ineffective the ads become, the less conversions for retailers, and the more they pivot to other advertising platforms, which will impact the revenues for the firm.\nHowever, Facebook has disclosed that this will particularly only affect one form of advertisement which relies heavily on the IDFA, known as Audience Networks. Fortunately, the audience network segment only represents less than 10% of the firm’s total revenues. With the impact estimating to cost a drop in50% of all ads deliveredand hence sales from this segment, this would atbest represent a 5% drop in their total revenues. With that said, we do not anticipate that this will be present significant impact moving forward and the firm can easily recoup the 5% loss at worse by focusing on increasing ARPUs and user engagement to save their core business.\nThough Facebook started by disclosing that they anticipated the impact on their revenues to be large at first, this no longer seems to be the case. If anything, history has shown us that Mark is not one to back down and if he doesn’t get his way, he damn well will find another way to minimise loss and increase revenue generation in other segments to make up for it. If you aren’t too involved in the technicalities, we think it’s safe to bet on the jockey in this case. Besides, AR / VR growth,WhatsApp monetization, Reels monetization, further user growth in less developed countries away from the legacy North America and Europe region can very well pick up the lost (US$5BN) in sales.\nMoat\nAs mentioned above, the DAUs and MAUs for Facebook are very impressive with a large portion of the world using at least 1 of their products. The moat for the business relies on the wide user base that Facebook has meticulously built over the course of 17 years. With any new product that they have, the firm can easily roll it out to their database of users and expect demand to pick up in a matter of weeks, maybe even days. That is the power of the network of Facebook that really can’t be valued.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nDespite the controversy, endless allegations, and negative headlines one after the other, the numbers don’t lie. DAUs have been increasing every single quarter, with the fastest growth observed in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. US & Canada growth has slowed as it nears saturation levels, and this is perfectly normal and to be expected. The way we anticipate Facebook to grow their core cash cow business moving forward is clean. 1) Focus on growing ARPUs in their saturated legacy areas (US & Canada and Europe) as well as 2) Increase User Growth by Geography in their growth areas (Asia-Pacific and the Rest of the World). Unsurprisingly, Facebook has been focused on doing just that.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nWhen we look to the infamous metric for judging social media companies and their performance – ARPUs, we can see that in the legacy areas, ARPUs have been increasing at a faster pace than compared to growth areas. This falls in line with point number 1 as mentioned above. The legacy areas have already reached saturation levels and user growth is unable to grow at astounding rates anymore. However, since this represent areas that are more developed and generally have higher disposable incomes on the average, focusing on increasing ARPUs and monetizing advertisers is the right strategy and a very feasible one. Though the growth areas are also seeing ARPUs grow YoY as they should, they are not at the same pace as in the US & Canada and Europe. When we look to revenue generated by geography below, this confirms the thesis that revenue is growing faster than user base in those areas, and since ARPU equal to (Total Revenue from that Geography / Number of Users in that area), so long revenue is growing at a faster pace than the user base, they should increase meaningfully.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nWhen we look to the slide below, it is also apparent that user numbers are growing much faster in Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world, away from the legacy areas. Across 2 years, MAUs which is the broadest business performance metric employed by Facebook, grew 22.4% and 25.4% in the growth areas while they only grew a mere 6.6% in US & Canada and 10.2% in Europe.\n(Source: FB Q1’21 Presentation)\nIf Facebook can continue to grow their user engagement numbers in the growth areas whilst maximizing ARPUs in legacy areas, the company can easily ensure that the core advertising model will remain the cash cow of the business, funding growth for their other product developments.\nGrowth Tactics\nWhen we look to potential growth Facebook has, the company isn’t short of any. Facebook has moved to monetizeWhatsApp, where they plan to generate fees from payments made within the app itself as well as through in-app status advertisements. The company is essentially trying to integrate the growth and TAM of the E-commerce market more seamlessly into their family of products including the likes ofWhatsApp. ThroughFacebook Pay, users can now engage in peer-to-peer payments withinWhatsApp itself at no cost. However, when businesses receive a fee from customers through the app itself, they will then have to pay a small ‘processing fee’ to Facebook and this is where it profits. This is the same method that is being employed by Shopify and all the other payment processing channels just that it is now being done locally inWhatsApp itself.WhatsApp payments has launched in Brazil, the 2nd largest market by users and the fee stands at 3.99%.\n(Source:Facebook Newsroom)\nThe firm has also been trying to grow their presence in the E-commerce market and reduce the friction customers experience when clicking through ads on its platforms. Both Instagram checkout and Facebook shops are aimed at doing just that. Their shops solutions are also expanding toWhatsApp, and the marketplace as observed above. The company sees a major shift to online shopping even after the grand reopening of the economies. As part of its effort over the years, they now have 1.2M active shops across their platforms and more than 300M monthly shop visitors. Thelatest releasestates that:\n\n Soon, we’ll give businesses in select countries the option to showcase their Shop inWhatsApp. In the US, we’ll enable them to bring Shops products into Marketplace, helping them reach the more than 1 billion people globally who visit each month.\n\n(Source:Facebook Newsroom)\nWhat’s even more fascinating is the fact that Facebook now plans to integrate new technologies such as AR Dynamic Ads to power the future of shopping. New visual discovery tools on their platforms like Instagram will help customers find new products that they resonate with faster than ever before and help them to visualize their products with AR experiences that they have been working on for a long time now.\nTheir continued expansion in the AR/VR market along with the rollout of DIEM, their native digital currency functioning as a stablecoin that was once under the “Libra Project” also presents good growth opportunity in the near future. Facebook is also looking to introducepodcasts and live audio streamsas part of the beginning of their audio journey. In short, Facebook still has a lot of room to grow moving forward apart from looking to squeeze out more cash from their legacy advertising business model. However, as always, product development is one thing, but the financials do need to shape up as well and with Facebook it does.\nFinancials\nOf the FAANG stock group, Facebook enjoys one of the highest margins. The company saw 80.55% in GM in Q1’21 and even in the past, it has enjoyed such high margins, trading between 80.5% to as high as 86.6% in FY17. The chart below also clearly indicates that the remarkable margins trickle down to the bottom line and aren’t wiped out due to operating expenses, registering a NPM of 35.7%.\nData by YCharts\nFB also routinely spends a large portion of their revenues on R&D, reinvesting into the business YoY to further improve their products and innovate on new ones. In 2020 the R&D expense represented 21.5% of total sales.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nA large chunk of the firms’ revenues is also retained on the balance sheet which is then used over the years to funnel money to continue their acquisitive culture. Despite this, the strong cashflow that the firm enjoys allows it to stay at the top of their industry in terms of innovation whilst ensuring that their treasure trove of cash is growing should there be a need to deploy it. When we look to liquid cash that the firm holds (Cash & Equivalents, and STI), Facebook has grown it at a tremendous CAGR of 26.2%. Net Debt has also just been becoming less of a concern over the years. To date, even after the pandemic, Facebook has no debt.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nGiven the data above, it is evident that the firm has one of the most pristine balance sheets in the industry and in the whole stock market. The US$62 BN that they hold as cash presents itself as a massive buffer to cushion the impact of whatever comes their way, be it another acquisitive opportunity, or yet another fine. Either way, the company can weather any financial storm and near balance sheet issues aren’t a problem. Shareholders aren’t too pleased with the cash pile just sitting there and would instead rather the firm start paying a dividend or pick up the pace in share buybacks to maximize investor returns. Facebook has never paid a dividend in its entirety and although they may consider that moving forward, we anticipate that it is not a move that they will commit to. In any case, we ourselves hope that they commit to more share buybacks instead of moving to issue a dividend.\n(Source:Q1 10-K Filing SEC)\nIn their 10-K filing, the company expanded their SRP program to include an additional US$25 BN which will be added atop the US$8.6 BN remaining from a 2017 authorization. That amounts to a current authorized SRP valued at around US$33.6 BN and we anticipate that this may further increase substantially moving forward. Despite outstanding shares reducing overtime, a large part is offset by additional equity issued as part of SBC to employees. It is disappointing that the firm isn’t making more of a definitive move to put that cash pile to use but this is nonetheless not a major red flag.\nValuations\nBeing a blue-chip company with strong FCF, we would normally value the social media giant with a DCF model. Today, however, we will be looking at EV/Sales and P/E Ratios to try and justify its future valuation, looking 3 years out as always to end 2023.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nLooking 3 years out to end 23, Facebook is projected to grow revenues at an average of 23.4%, with growth in the 30s for this fiscal year. That would mean that Facebook is anticipated to grow revenues to US$160.8 BN by end 2023, up 87% from what they delivered in FY20 in 3 years.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nSince 2018, the firm has traded at an average EV/Sales of 8.85, and last exchanged hands at a multiple of 9.76. Although the firm is trading at a multiple above its mean and higher than any of the other stocks as part of the FAANG group, Facebook does have higher estimates than all the other companies in the near future as observed below. The data does not reflect estimates for 2023.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nMoreover, when we look further into the past all the way back to 2013, the company has historically traded at an average of 12.82 and even registered a high close to 22 in 2014. However, since we want to be conservative, but believe that the market has yet to really price Facebook for what it’s worth given all the headline risks in the media that have induced immediate selloffs without any fundamental reason, we will employ a multiple of 9.\n(Source: TIKR.com)\nAt an EV/Sales multiple of 9, that would put Facebook at a US$1.447 TRN dollar valuation by the end of 2023 and a share price of US$539, an upside of 58%.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nWhen we look to revenue surprise and analyst estimate beat / miss trends, Facebook has quite the historical track record of surpassing estimates, having done so 10/12 times in the past 3 years. The average upside surprise stands at 3.59%. Assuming Facebook will continue to deliver the same upside surprise moving forward, a 3.59% beat to the top line estimate of 2023 would warrant revenues of US$166.57 BN. At the same EV/Sales ratio of 9, that would render a higher valuation of US$558.77 USD. Given that Facebook is very close to crossing the US$1 TRN dollar valuation mark, we anticipate this to be a very realistic price target.\nNow shifting on to another valuation method by P/E multiples, the valuation also paints a similar picture.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nTurning to earnings estimates, the company is also projected to do high-teens digit growth for 2022 and 2023 and a close to 30% growth in the bottom line for this fiscal year.\nData by YCharts\nDespite trading at the highest EV / Sales ratio of the FAANG stocks, Facebook is trading at the lowest TTM normalized PE Ratio amongst its peers, with the inclusion of Microsoft (FANGMA). This is likely due to the market failing to internalize and appreciate the company’s high NPM and profitability. Currently trading at a P/E ratio of 29.14, this is also below its historical means of as high as 60+ in 2016.\nData by YCharts\nHowever, given that earnings have improved dramatically since and likely won’t be revisiting those levels as seen from the forward estimates, we will stick with what we believe to be a fair multiple for the stickiest company in the world, 30. At a P/E ratio of 30, that would put the end 2023 share price somewhere near levels of US$531.\n(Source:Seeking Alpha)\nHowever, because of a surprisingly good earnings-beat track record once again, this has to be factored in moving forward. Of the last 3 years, Facebook has beat earnings 11/12 times. The average beat comes in at 15.72%. If we were to stick to a similar but more conservative beat of say 7%, that would put 2023 normalized earnings at 18.93. The exact same P/E ratio would now warrant a realistic share price of US$567.8, an upside of 66.3%.\nWith all 4 estimates using different methods and assumptions with different levels of conservatism employed delivering a potential share price anywhere between US$531 and US$568, it would be fair to conclude that this is a realistic price target for the cashflow king 3 years out into the future. At the low end of estimates of US$531, this is still indicative of a 55% upside.\nInvestor Takeaways\nTo conclude, we believe Facebook has a very strong future ahead and the projected numbers for both the Topline and Bottom line are indicative of potential upside. We place significant emphasis on forward estimates as markets are future discounting mechanisms that react accordingly. The company enjoys unbelievably high margins, has a pristine balance sheet with absolutely no debt, and is anticipated to keep raking in high revenues with strong cashflow numbers.\nWith so many growth opportunities such as the monetization ofWhatsApp, AR/VR, shops, marketplace growth, DIEM, and the continued growth in its legacy advertisement business both in terms of MAP and ARPUs, Facebook is here to stay and is nowhere near exhausting its full potential. The sizeable TAMs in each of the different business segments combined with other opportunities such as Facebook Reels which we did not cover, and the fact that it has yet to have been monetized, all point to a bright future.\nThat being said, it is a given that the company will face many other bumps along moving forward. Facebook will continue to be subjected to what we call ‘headline risks’ whereby the stock will be overly sold off to the downside based upon nothing fundamental but one-sided exaggerated narratives. This we believe presents the best time to pick up shares and accumulate for the long run. Facebook has been perceived to have engaged in a lot of dubious unethical behaviour surrounding user data but like we said, that is separate from the investment opportunity the company presents and we will leave that to you to decide. Granted that there are many reasons surrounding the company's beat-down reputation, the return on invested capital is a different story and the main one to be focused on when considering if a company is a good investment or not.\nEnd day, when it comes to blue-chip stocks that have a firm hold in the industry, good sticky products, and solid financials, it is hard for the stock not to trend up overtime so long as estimates paint a bright picture and most importantly, the markets continue to value them in the same rational way. This has not always been the case and can be easily seen from Microsoft’s outperformance hiatus when the Dot Com bubble crashed, and the stock took 17 years to put in a new high. Still, we believe blue chip stocks are a good bet as of now and should be a part of everyone’s portfolio, and Facebook presents the best buy of the FAANG from our perspective. Till next 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