Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Is Facebook REALLY worth only $7.50 per share


Keith Fitz-Gerald, Chief Investment Strategist, Money Morning has run the numbers and says Facebook is really worth only about $7.50 per share, not its $38 IPO price or its current price under $30 (off nearly 25%).  See http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20120529-713253.html  How does Fitz-Gerald arrive at his $7.50 figure?

As my good friend Barry Ritholtz pointed out recently, both Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) and Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) debuted at about 15 times earnings. Today they trade at 13.6 and 18.2 times earnings and 3.75 and 4.9 times sales respectively.  As I type, Facebook's market cap is $86.84 billion and its price to sales is ridiculously high at 21.01. I think that's way out of line.

So what should the numbers be?

Try this on for size. If we use Google's price to sales ratio of 4.9 (and I am being generous here for discussion purposes), that equals a total market cap of $20.24 billion or 76.68% lower than where it's trading today.  With 2.74 billion shares outstanding, that's equal to only $7.39-$7.50 per share.

Read Fitz-Gerald’s complete analysis here: 
http://econintersect.com/b2evolution/blog3.php/2012/05/29/facebook-top-valuation-should-be-7-50

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