给Facebook估价

　　Lex in depth: Facebook

　　Your 3,000 “friends” will not care if you buy at the wrong price and it does not matter whether you liked the movie. Ahead of this month’s planned initial public offering, investors need to start thinking about Facebook the stock not Facebook the cultural phenomenon. What sort of company is it, and how to value it rationally?

　　你在Facebook上的那3000个“朋友”才不在乎你买股票时，出价是不是太高了，也不在乎你是不是喜欢那部电影。Facebook计划在本月进行首次公开发行(IPO)，在IPO之前，投资者需要对Facebook这只股票，而不是Facebook这个文化现象进行思考。Facebook是怎样的一种公司，该如何理性地对其估值?

　　The IPO is expected to raise $10bn or more, making it the biggest tech offering ever, but its significance is greater than that. Its success or failure will be interpreted as a judgment on a generation of companies that aims to wring profits from online social life, and as a measure of an uncertain market’s risk appetite. The feverish atmosphere surrounding the debut makes it all the more vital to take a step back and assess Facebook as just another business.

　　Facebook的IPO预计至少将筹得100亿美元资金，使其成为迄今最大的一宗科技企业上市案例。然而Facebook上市的重要意义却不仅在于金额。Facebook上市的成败，不仅会被解读为市场对整整一代企业——它们希望从人们的在线社交生活中赚取利润——作出的判断，还将被用来衡量当前充满不确定性的市场承担风险的意愿。围绕Facebook上市已经产生出狂热的氛围。这样一来，冷静下来，像评估一家普通企业一样评估Facebook变得更加重要。

　　Being Microsoft and Google

　　既要当微软又要当谷歌

　　Valuing Facebook is particularly tricky because its impressive but hardly flawless present performance is an imperfect guide to its future. Instead, shareholders wanting to place a bet on the business need to think carefully about two fundamental questions.

　　为Facebook估值尤其需要小心，因为尽管它的当前业绩十分出色，但并非毫无瑕疵，所以并不是我们预测其未来的完美指导。有意对Facebook下注的投资者需要仔细地考虑以下两个基本的问题。

　　First: will Facebook become a part of everything that happens on the internet rather than just one digital tool among others? To justify the lavish valuations being suggested, the company must attain a position across the internet similar to the one Microsoft once held in personal computing. Ownership of the operating system, the browser and the document software made Microsoft the water in which all computer users swam: often invisible, perhaps not particularly loved, but immensely profitable. Computing must become deeply social, and Facebook must own that social dimension and make it pay.

　　第一，Facebook将渗透到互联网上发生的一切活动中去，还是仅仅只是多种数字化工具中的一种?要想使目前的高昂估值显得合理，Facebook就必须要在互联网领域取得微软(Microsoft)曾经在个人电脑市场达到的地位。微软拥有操作系统、浏览器和文档处理软件，就像无处不在的水，所有电脑用户都在其中畅游----尽管用户视而不见，可能也并不十分喜欢，但却利润丰厚。用户的计算机使用必须变得深度社交网络化，而且Facebook必须拥有这个社交网络，并让其赚钱。

　　Second: can Facebook change digital advertising as profoundly as Google has done in the past decade? Within internet search, Google enables advertisers to target customers based on their searches that is, based on their explicit intentions. Returns to advertisers are measurable and high. Facebook aims to do for users’ social connections what Google did for their intentions. Whether users will co-operate remains to be seen. If not, Facebook will not live up to the hype.

　　第二，Facebook为数字广告带来的转变，能否像谷歌(Google)在过去十年中做到的那样深刻?通过互联网搜索，谷歌让广告商能够根据用户的搜索行为(也就是根据用户的明确意愿)直接命中目标消费者。广告商获得的回报可以衡量，而且很高。Facebook想利用用户的社交关系，来做谷歌利用用户的意愿做到的事。用户是否愿意配合还有待观察。如果答案是否定的，Facebook就无法满足如此高的期待。

　　Like the margins

　　利润率很“赞”

　　Facebook has achieved a lot. Revenues grew 88 per cent last year, from a $2bn base. Operating profit margins were nearly 50 per cent. That is amazing. Five years ago, when Google was growing at a similar pace, its margins were much lower, and remain so. Even Microsoft touched Facebook’s current margin levels only in the late 1990s, when revenues were running at $20bn a year. That said, growth is not moving upwards in a straight line. Facebook is not adding users or advertisers fast enough to obscure seasonal ups and downs. Advertising revenues 84 per cent of the total in the past year were lower in the first quarter than in the fourth in the past two years.

　　Facebook已经取得了很大的成就。去年收入在20亿美元的基础上增长了88%，营业利润率近50%，表现不俗。五年前谷歌正在以相似的速度增长时，其利润率要低很多，而且至今一直如此。微软则直到上世纪90年代末才取得Facebook当前的利润率，当时其收入规模已经达到了每年200亿美元。尽管如此，业务增长的趋势并不会像一条直线那样上升。Facebook用户和广告商增加的速度还不足以抹平季节性波动。过去两年中，一季度广告收入均低于上年四季度。去年Facebook广告收入占总收入的84%。

　　click to enlarge

　　Facebook估值分析(英文)，请点击放大

　　And Facebook has not solved the problem confronting all internet media companies: low barriers to entry and vicious competition. Friendster and MySpace? Gone. One might think Facebook is too big to follow. But it spends as if facing mortal threats. It boasted that photo-sharing was a core service yet last month suddenly shelled out $1bn in cash and shares for Instagram, a photo-sharing start-up. So it seems low natural barriers to entry might require the constant building of artificial ones out of real money.

　　况且Facebook也还没有解决所有互联网媒体企业面临的问题：准入门槛低、竞争残酷。还记得Friendster和MySpace吗?都大势已去。你可能会觉得Facebook已经大到了竞争对手赶不上的地步，但它却在像面临着生死威胁那样花钱。Facebook曾宣称照片分享是一项核心服务，然而上个月却又突然掷出10亿美元现金和股票，收购初创的照片分享网站Instagram。这似乎表明，市场的自然准入门槛很低，因此Facebook可能需要花真金白银人为地建立门槛。

　　And while it is easy to start a social network, it looks expensive to run a big one. Real assets need to be bought. Capital expenditures amounted to 30 per cent of revenues, or $1bn, at Facebook last year, and chewed up nearly half of revenues in the most recent quarter. Free cash flow return on assets is strong but Google’s is twice as high.

　　尽管创立一家社交网络站点很容易，但运营一个大型的社交网络却成本高昂，需要购置实物资产。去年，Facebook的资本支出为收入的30%，达10亿美元，上季度更是达到总收入的近一半。自由现金流资产回报率很高，但谷歌却是Facebook的两倍。

　　Return on assets should improve as Facebook grows. But even if capital expenditure falls relative to revenues, operating cost trends do not reassure. In spite of annualised sales well over $4bn, there is little sign Facebook is increasing its revenues faster than its cost base.

　　随着Facebook的业务增长，资产回报率应该也会改善。但即使资本支出相对于收入出现下降，运营成本的变动趋势仍然无法使人安心。尽管年化销售额远超40亿美元，但几乎没有迹象表明Facebook收入增长的速度能够超过其成本基础。

　　Finally, management. Facebook sits in the palm of 27-year-old chief executive Mark Zuckerberg who will control more than half the voting shares after the IPO. That level of trust in a single person is troubling. Still, nothing is being hidden from investors in this regard.

　　最后还有管理问题。Facebook掌握在27岁的首席执行官马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)手中，在IPO之后他将控制超过一半的有投票权的股份。对一个人信任到这种程度令人不安。不过在这个问题上，Facebook倒没有对投资者有所隐瞒。

　　Your mom is not cool

　　人多了就不好玩了

　　So much for Facebook today. Before turning to the future, remember the immutable laws of finance. Stratospheric growth never lasts. Returns fade. New threats emerge.

　　关于Facebook的现在，我们就说到这里。在讨论它的未来之前，记住这几个颠扑不破的财务定律：超高的增长率不可能永远持续;回报率永远会越来越低;新的威胁会不断出现。

　　Hence that first big question: can Facebook burrow into all aspects of computing and stay there, as Microsoft did or will it give way to the next new thing? Clearly, social networks are unstable in their early years. But once they reach a certain scale they become more resilient. Any communication tool that is already popular has an advantage in attracting new users the “network effect”. Software designers will aim their best new stuff at the biggest platforms a phenomenon from which Apple and Android are benefiting in mobile computing.

　　因此，第一个重大问题：Facebook是会像微软那样将触角伸到计算机行业的各个角落，还是会被下一个新生事物所取代?显然，社交网络在早期的时候不稳定。但达到一定规模以后，它们的抗压能力就会增强。任何已经开始流行的通讯工具都在吸引新用户方面拥有优势，这就是“网络效应”。软件设计师在设计最新最好的程序时，会瞄准最大的平台——在移动计算机领域，苹果(Apple)和Android就是这一现象的获益者。

　　With 900m active users, Facebook looks dominant already. But investors must consider the possibility that, like most products, its usefulness will peak and decline. Many of the connections users have formed could cease to be of interest. The network starts to carry more noise than information. People look for something more interesting. Social networks have inherent stabilisers as they grow but may also have a big destabiliser: boredom.

　　有9亿名活跃用户的Facebook似乎已经取得了主导地位。但投资者们必须考虑这样一种可能性：如大多数产品一样，它的作用将达到极限，随后开始下降。用户在社交网络中建立的许多联系人可能会慢慢变得无趣。社交网络携带的噪音将开始超过有用的信息。人们会寻找更有趣的东西。随着社交网络的发展，它会自然地趋于稳定，但同时，一项很大的不稳定因素也会增长：腻烦。

　　This problem is compounded, it seems likely, by the ever-increasing probability that your mother (or father or teacher) is on Facebook. That is, as user numbers increase, it becomes less cool. The company would argue it does not need to be cool. Once its user base reaches a certain size, it becomes irreplaceable. Should Facebook attain a stable monopoly on social networking, it would be easy to dream of a time when searching for information, reading news, watching television, writing a document or talking on the telephone are activities conducted on the Facebook platform or given a social dimension imported from and controlled by Facebook. It is this picture that makes some analysts think the company could be worth $100bn or more. Certainly, the potential revenue pool is enormous.

　　使这个问题更严重的是，你母亲(或父亲、老师)也在Facebook上的可能性看来似乎是会不断增加的。也就是说，随着用户数量的不断增长，这个社交网络变得不那么酷了。

　　But users may not stay loyal for ever. True, all the data that make up a user’s identity comments, pictures, likes, connections with friends are in effect owned by, and trapped on, Facebook. The company has carefully made it costly to leave. The question is whether the costs are high enough to prevent flitting among the networks and tools that have not been invented yet. It is hard to quit using Microsoft’s software or Google’s search engine, not just because of network effects but also because almost everyone needs to do things those tools make possible. Competitors are more expensive or not as good. Facebook simply is not essential to life or work in the same way.

　　Facebook可能会辩称，它不需要很酷。一旦用户数量达到一定规模，它就变得不可替代了。如果Facebook在社交网络领域取得了稳定的垄断地位，我们就容易想象，有朝一日，搜索信息、阅读新闻、看电视、写文件或语音通话等活动，都将在Facebook上进行，或在一种来自Facebook、并被其控制的社交维度中进行。正是这种可能性，使得一些分析师认为，Facebook的估值可能达到1000亿美元甚至更高。当然，潜在的收入池是巨大的。

　　And remember that Facebook was developed at the tail-end of the PC era. As the smartphone ascends, the company is already playing catch-up with competitors born and bred on mobile devices. Naturally, Facebook could survive without monopolistic control of the social dimension of computing. But it would need to spend aggressively to protect market share, implying lower margins.

　　但用户可能不会永远保持忠诚。诚然，所有构成用户身份的东西——评论、照片、“赞”、好友关系——实际上都由Facebook拥有和掌管。Facebook的精心设计旨在提高用户注销的成本。但问题是，这个成本是否高到足以防止用户转投未来的新型网络和工具?我们很难弃用微软的软件或谷歌的搜索引擎，不仅因为网络效应，还因为这些工具所提供的服务是几乎所有人都必须用到的。转投微软或谷歌的竞争对手要花费更高的成本，或无法获得同样质量的服务。而Facebook对人们的生活或工作并没有那么重要。

　　Your corporate friend

　　而且，Facebook是在PC时代的末期开发的。随着智能手机的出现，这家企业已经被一些根植于移动设备的竞争者甩在了身后。当然，即便Facebook无法垄断计算机业的整个社交领域，它也可以生存。但那样的话，Facebook可能需要花很多钱来保护市场份额，这意味着它的利润率会降低。

　　Monopoly or not, can Facebook deliver a better internet ad?

　　一种“更优越”的广告形式?

　　The worry is that its model is just too creepy. From the IPO filing: “Advertisers can specify that we show their ads to a subset of our users based on demographic factors and specific interests they have chosen to share with us . . . We offer advertisers the ability to include ‘social context’ with their marketing messages. Social context is information that highlights a friend’s connections with a particular brand or business, for example, that a friend Liked a product or checked in at a restaurant.” To translate: we will harvest information about you and use it to help advertisers sell you things, or (creepier still) help advertisers “join the conversation” between you and your friends.

　　不管垄断不垄断，Facebook能否提供更好的网络广告服务?

　　Now, this may have some pleasant repercussions. Advertisers could end up offering stuff people actually want. And privacy protection features will be put in place. But the issue is whether what Facebook does to increase the value of the data it collects makes users enjoy Facebook less and use it less. Users might start to think they are the product not the customer. Not a fun feeling.

　　人们担心的是，Facebook的模式太可怕了。Facebook在它的IPO文件中写道：“广告商可以要求我们根据用户统计因素和用户分享中显示的兴趣，对特定用户进行定点广告投放……广告商可以在‘社交背景’中发布市场推广信息。社交背景是一种信息，它凸显一名好友与某个品牌或某种业务之间的联系，例如，一名好友‘赞’了某种产品，或去过某家餐厅。”说白了就是：我们会收集关于你的信息，利用这些信息帮助广告商将一些东西卖给你，或(更可怕的是)帮助广告商“插进”你和朋友们之间的对话。

　　The contrast with Google is striking. If Lex types “HP 12C calculator” into Google, it is setting itself up to see a certain kind of ad alongside search results. Indeed, users often have commercial intentions when they search. This is absolutely not the case on Facebook. And if the company cannot target ads without turning off users, revenue growth will slow, and soon.

　　如今，关于这一点，人们的反响可能在转好。最终，广告商提供的东西可能是人们实际上想要的。隐私保护机制也会被启用。但问题是，Facebook为提高所收集用户数据的价值而做的一些事，是否会让用户变得不那么喜欢Facebook，也不再那么频繁地使用Facebook。用户可能会开始认为，自己是一项“产品”，而非顾客。这种感觉不好玩。

　　So one metric worth following is growth in revenue per user. The numbers do not look good. There is still double-digit growth but there is a clear pattern of deceleration. Revenue growth is coming more from adding users than from making ads work better. If this continues, that is a signal of serious tensions in Facebook’s business model.

　　令人瞩目的是，在这一点上，谷歌的情况则大不相同。如果笔者在谷歌中键入“惠普(HP)12C计算器”，在出现搜索结果的同时会出现一些类似广告的东西。用户搜索某样东西时，确实常常是打算购买。而Facebook的情况完全不同。如果Facebook无法在不招用户讨厌的情况下进行广告定点投放，它的营收增长就会放慢，而且用不了多长时间。

　　What’s a friend worth?

　　所以，一个值得关注的衡量标准是，每名用户的平均营收增长率。这项数字看起来不妙。增长率仍然保持在两位数，但明显有下降的趋势。营收增长更多地来自用户的增加，而非广告效果的提高。如果这种情况继续下去，就标志着Facebook的经营模式面临严重问题。

　　How to put all this into a Facebook valuation? To justify the big numbers being tossed around $100bn and up several things must happen in the next five to seven years. The business needs to become much less capital intensive (inclusive of acquisitions) over time, as Google and Microsoft have done. That is the easy part. But margins must also stay near today’s level of about 50 per cent which would be uncharted territory. And sales would have to grow at least sixfold in this period.

　　一个Facebook好友值多少钱?

　　The latter is certainly possible. For comparison, when Google had the same revenues as Facebook has now it took just seven years for them to increase another 10 times. That magnitude of growth took a decade at Microsoft when it too earned about $4bn a year back in 1993.

　　在评估Facebook价值的时候，如何把这一切都计算进去?Facebook的IPO估值为1000亿美元或更高，在未来5至7年内，几件事情必须实现，这么高的估值才能算合理。首先，Facebook必须逐渐大幅降低资本密集度(包括减少并购)，如谷歌和微软所做到的那样。这是比较容易的部分。其次，Facebook还需要基本保持当前的利润率水平(约50%)，这一点目前还没有任何企业做到过。第三，在未来5至7年内，Facebook的销售额也必须增长至少5倍。

　　The conclusion is this: it is hard to imagine the required levels of growth or margins if Facebook does not become ubiquitous or cannot deliver on the promise of a superior sort of internet advertising. If it cannot, a $100bn-plus valuation will be about as meaningful as having 3,000 friends.

　　最后一点是绝对可能实现的。以谷歌为例，它只花了7年时间就把营收在Facebook如今的水平上提高了10倍。1993年，微软的营收达到40亿美元后，它也只花了10年时间就把营收提高了10倍。

　　结论是：如果Facebook无法变得无处不在，或无法兑现提供更优越网络广告的承诺，那么我们就很难想象它能实现必要的增长率或利润率。如果Facebook做不到这两点，超过1000亿美元的估值之于投资者的意义，恐怕仅仅相当于3000名好友之于用户的意义。