My Contribution to the Facebook Noise

All eyes are on Facebook and CEO Mark Zuckerberg as the stock is scheduled to debut on the NYSE this Friday. They have lips flapping as pundits and gurus are shouting over each other to get their opinions noted on whether this business is worth your investment dollars. Allow me to add to the din by expanding on my previous post, Whom Does Management Serve?

Zuckerberg has garnered plenty of criticism for pocketing the majority of voting rights, ensuring that he will have total and complete control over every aspect of the business, not the least of which is strategic direction. And he's not shy about saying has his own plans for the company which is likely to be at odds frequently with investors looking for financial results. 

Facebook's Registration Statement (filed in February with the SEC) contains a letter from Zuckerberg outlining his priorities. Some excerpts...

Facebook was not originally founded to be a company. We’ve always cared primarily about our social mission, the services we’re building and the people who use them. This is a different approach for a public company to take, so I want to explain why I think it works...

Simply put: we don’t build services to make money; we make money to build better services. And we think this is a good way to build something...

These days I think more and more people want to use services from companies that believe in something beyond simply maximizing profits.

By focusing on our mission and building great services, we believe we will create the most value for our shareholders and partners over the long term — and this in turn will enable us to keep attracting the best people and building more great services.

We don’t wake up in the morning with the primary goal of making money, but we understand that the best way to achieve our mission is to build a strong and valuable company. This is how we think about our IPO as well.

Here we have a CEO telling the world, in no uncertain terms, that maximizing profits is not his priority. He has a bigger and different vision for the world. As investors we should be aghast, right?

Before addressing that, let me admit that I have no idea what Facebook is worth as a business. It's probably a fair amount, but my prevailing model used to understand social media companies is MySpace.  It was the pre-Facebook darling, beneficiary of young eyeballs and the power of the network effect. As such, it was scooped up by News Corp for a fat price. And shortly thereafter all the eyeballs left. Quickly and unceremoniously. That fickle bunch decided Facebook was the place to do all the stuff they had previously done on MySpace. And now MySpace is a shadow of its former self.

We're assured that Facebook is superior, having solved all the problems that plagued MySpace and left subscribers willing to entertain an alternative. That would never happen to Facebook, we're assured. Maybe. But I'm not comfortable with the possibility, and so it's a clear pass for me.

That being said, I'll confess the utmost admiration for the move Zuckerberg pulled to consolidate control. And if Facebook is going to live up to its potential, it will come at the hands of the founder. He has a vision for it that extends beyond share price. I think that's essential for a business. They lose their soul when they get too eager to please shareholders.

If I could get pass the MySpace hang up, I would assess the following in determining if Facebook was a good investment...

First, is it participating in a large and/or growing market for the services it offers? I believe it probably is. It has a lot of room to add new users and expand the ways members utilize it today. 

Second, does it have a profitable economic model? (i.e., Do its revenues exceeds its costs and expenses and can it produce earnings in excess of its costs of reinvested capital?) Most likely, yes. It's profitable now, though throwing tons of cash back into growth. That user base must have some economic value, and the management minds at Facebook will likely discover the right method for tapping into it. 

Third, does it have competitive advantages in place that protect its market share and margins from encroachment? That's the part that I just don't know, and I don't think I could wrap my head around that issue even if I decided to spend a lot of time researching it.

If the answers to these questions were yes, and I believed Mark Zuckerberg had the ability to drive its success by focusing on the long-term value of Facebook as it serves as social connector for the world...but that in continuing to build it in that model, he was likely to face the ire of investors that would prefer profits now rather than wait...

Then I would celebrate Zuckerberg cornering control the way that he did. As a long-term investor, I would celebrate a CEO that openly denigrates profit decisions in favor of investing in the long-term competitive advantages of the business. And I would relish the fact that profit-takers would have no voice in the decisions guiding the business.

I would appreciate that the characteristics that make Facebook a franchise will be stronger five or ten years hence, and that I would therefore own a piece of a much more valuable pie.

But there are a lot of "ifs" to be satisfied first.