Big news early in 2011 with Goldman Sachs raising and investing up to $1.5 billion in Facebook. To do so, Goldman is setting up a “Special Purpose Vehicle” (SPV). Because Facebook is a privately-held company, it can have no more than 499 individual investors due to SEC regulations. This SPV enables Goldman to make highly… [Read more…]
November 26, 2008
Following up with an additional thought on the Twitter/Facebook saga… In yesterday’s article, I approached Twitter’s valuation from a “per twitterer” basis – arriving at an estimated value of $45 per twitterer based on Facebook’s $500 million which is really worth $150 million using the “Henry Blodget Facebook valuation discount factor.” To put the $45… [Read more…]
November 26, 2008
Maybe the message was something like: Twitter: @Facebook “No can do. Thx 4 the offer.” It’s common knowledge now that Twitter declined Facebook’s “$500 million” offer. Running some numbers yields some interesting results on the offer and valuations of both companies. (We’ll come back to the quotes around the $500 million shortly…) Back in April,… [Read more…]
August 9, 2008
I read about the recent $53 mln Bain Capital investment to LinkedIn and I was prepared to write an article again questioning the valuation of another social/business networking site. Like many, I’m not particularly enamoured with the current $15 billion valuation of Facebook, so my initial reaction to the $1.035 billion valuation of LinkedIn was… [Read more…]
May 18, 2008
The acquisition of CNET by CBS – let’s take a quick look at the numbers. I began by checking out the Balance Sheet, and as a content and media company, one would expect what I saw – relatively low base of assets and liabilities. Pretty tough to determine the value of CNET based on assets… [Read more…]
April 20, 2008
In early April when Google stock was trading at the mid-$400s, I started thinking about its market valuation and price per share. Maybe it was a good buying opportunity since coming down from its all-time highs in the $700+ range late last year. In the spirit of the analysis I’ve done in previous articles with… [Read more…]
April 4, 2008
Recent word is that Microsoft has no plans to raise its $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo! Inc. $44.6 billion got me wondering how this matched up to Yahoo’s value based on its balance sheet. I found one item to be particularly interesting – “goodwill” – which seems to be indicative of Yahoo! Inc.’s problems, and… [Read more…]
March 30, 2008
Starbucks is favorite company of mine to use in various finance and business strategy lectures, (and to get a jolt before our Sunday strategy meetings at Altos Research). Over the past decade, Starbucks enjoyed a steady rise up, initiated aggressive international expansions plans, and with their recent reappointment of Harold Schultz as CEO, is now… [Read more…]
March 22, 2008
At market close on Thursday, Bear Stearns was trading at nearly $6/share, yielding a market capitalization of just over $800 million, nearly a tripling of the publicly-announced offer of $2/share ($236 million) from last weekend. The general consensus indicates that the real estate owned by Bear Stearns in New York City is worth about $1… [Read more…]
March 17, 2008
I found an interesting spot on the PBS website – dot.con – that was aired and published back in 2002. Now that we’re starting to get some perspective on the first Internet rush, reading these pieces in retrospect offers some valuable lessons going forward.
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January 4, 2011
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