Snapchat: a fortune foretold and a future untold
Freshly out this morning from CNBC:
Morgan Stanley analysts downgraded Snap on Tuesday, a day after the shares fell below their IPO price of $17. This is particularly insulting because Morgan Stanley took the Snapchat parent public, and therefore priced the IPO at $17 a share. The analysts are separate from the underwriters, but it still creates an awkward appearance.
It's ironic to see Snap being downgraded by the same bank that took its parent public. Kudos to Morgan Stanley for maintaining a high level of objectivity among its investment banking and research departments (CFA's Research Objectivity standards, anyone?)
We have been wrong about SNAP's ability to innovate and improve its ad product this year (improving scalability, targeting, measurability, etc.) and user monetization as it works to move beyond 'experimental' ad budgets into larger branded and direct response ad allocations."
As many monkeys and humans on WSO predicted, the Snap fad would burst very soon. It was just the matter of how soon. During pre-IPO time, we knew Snapchat wasn't making money, targeting a niche market, and going IPO at a ridiculously high multiple compared to its peers. All the hype was mostly about Snapchat's ability to capture its niche market in the digital advertising/social media market.
After the IPO, we have learnt that Snap's Stories feature (bread and butter) has been easily copied by Facebook and even Microsoft. Although Snap prides itself for constantly being copied by giants in the industry, it actually doesn't give itself a lot of branding power. What's good about the business then if its core feature is turning into a commodity? More critically, its business model is not as versatile as rivals like Facebook because Snap doesn't store users' snapped data. If it decides to store those data one day, that decision will just defeat the purpose of using Snapchat (privacy, spontaneity, etc.)
What's the future for Snap then? What's the catalyst to turn it around and gain a major position in the market ? Will it be bought out eventually? What's the consensus on mid/long-range price target?
How was your takeaway from the sequence of events below that MS was being objective?
1: MS, prior to leading the IPO underwriting, sets price target above IPO price 2: MS catches an error that would lower the price below the IPO price a few days later. Announces the error, but makes an offsetting change to their growth rate such that price target is the same. 3: Market slams Snapchat 4: MS then decides to downgrade (i.e. just follows the market sentiment, as opposed to leading it)
I still like Snapchat better than Instagram stories because I feel like Instagram is a more public medium and I don't want to have to make mine private, but the gap is shrinking.
The thing I hate most about Snapchat is its inability to target information to me. When you go to stories and scroll down, you get shit from the Daily Mail, Mashable, Bleacher Report, etc. I don't care about any of this shit. I don't care about teens drinking meth, or what some Kardashian is wearing, or 10 ways to decorate your cat, or any of that garbage. It's 2017 - the internet knows every single thing I look up - and they should be able to tailor that shit to things I actually care about instead of what some 19 year old girl cares about.
Snap Takes a Bath (Originally Posted: 05/11/2017)
Hey Monkeys,
I am currently kicking myself - being young and not accustomed to trading stocks, I had embarked a couple months ago on the task of familiarizing myself with the markets. I read up as much as I could on Netflix and Snapchat, mostly because these companies were the first that came to mind, and at the time, Snapchat's IPO was in the works so I thought "why not". I then opened an Investopedia account as a way of keeping numerical track of my "convictions" (I know, I know...put your money where your mouth is), and began reading everything I could find on EDGAR and in the press about the companies.
I have been bearish on Snap since the IPO - to me, it seemed inevitable that once the first post-IPO data was released, it would fail to meet the stellar growth expectations held by the market.
Over the past several weeks I have monitored it daily, first profiting off its decline from a post-IPO high of ~$27, and then noticing that it traded in the $20-23 band, with very strong support around those numbers. So, on the assumption that they would break out of this band on a decline when numbers came out, I opened a short position on the simulator around 22.50 a couple weeks back.
They released their data earlier today for Q1, and so far are down 23.46% in after hours, to almost below IPO prices. Needless to say, I am kicking myself for being right and not trusting my judgment enough to put my money where my mouth is.
If any of you guys have been paying attention to SNAP, what have you been thinking since the IPO? Would be keen to see what others (especially people who do this professionally) have been thinking.
To me, today's result has been on the horizon plain as day since IPO. But, in the spirit of the self-checking journey I originally embarked on, I'd like to hear what others have been thinking.
I'd also love to hear any advice professionals have for me going forwards, as I have learned my lesson about risk aversion and contacted my securities clearance personnel as of five minutes ago. Depending how much more deep the trough goes in after-hours tonight, I plan to go long once we hit the trough, which I expect will be sometime tomorrow.
Thanks for the four paragraph play-by-play of how you made a single good trade in a mock portfolio.
Wall Street Is Obsessed With Snapchat (Originally Posted: 06/13/2013)
From Kevin Roose at nymag.com http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/06/wall-street-is-obsessed-wi… (see who's quoted at the bottom of the article...)
Do you mean to tell me the trusted financial advisors of our largest corporations are nothing more than children sending around pics of their junk in a passive aggressive attempt to lose their virginity?!
Snapchat Turns Down $3B Offer from FB (Originally Posted: 11/13/2013)
From WSJ:
Thoughts? Many seem to think he's made a huge mistake.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/11/13/snapchat-spurned-3-billion-acqui…
Seems like the majority of people on here don't use/understand snapchat. Snapchat is not a sexting app.
Within the teen/college and even post college demographic - its a primary source of texting. The point of snapchat is that people do not want a digital footprint of everything they do in life. FB and instagram externalize everything.
Snapchat mirrors real life in that what is said is only there for an instant. This will be the direction that users want in the future and snapchat has the platform and user base - they have achieved the network effect.
Revenues will be harder to monetize but they have a lot of options going forward, movie previews, funny videos from brands etc.
I don't know what its worth, especially in these crazy times, but dismissing the company is foolish.
Snap Inc IPO pitch - "We're the Next Facebook" (Originally Posted: 12/30/2016)
I noticed an interesting article on the front page of the WSJ website this morning regarding the Initial Public Offering of Snap Inc. The article states that when Snap goes on the road next year it will pitch itself as the next Facebook. Here are some key points from the article Article Link
Do you guys think this pitch will work and that Snap Inc. is a company that will one day be on par with Facebook? Or is Snap destined the same fate Twitter has suffered?
I highly doubt that, Facebook has proven to be much more then simply a trend and there are no viable alternatives out there to replace it. Sure the younger generations are gravitating more towards high frequency picture/video oriented products like snapchat, but they lack the structure that facebook allows its users. Not to mention facebook owns Instagram and therefore is also capitalizing on that trend regardless. Even if you think that facebook is loosing interest in the states, it continues to gain more users and traction abroad, a trend that isn't going to change any time soon.
In addition facebook still dominates messaging with both FB messenger and WhatsApp. They also maintain significant exposure in virtual reality which has had a pretty decent start when you factor in the high costs and lack of games. What are the big worries for facebook right now? The fake news thing is a joke that will blow over, or at the least, it will not significantly effect their bottom line.
People have been complaining about Facebook's valuation since its Series B round back in '06.
I hear people talk about how Facebook will go the way of the Dodo bird all the time - it's not exactly a novel perspective. But the reasons provided are never compelling, and seem to originate from an incomplete picture of human nature.
Some say Facebook is just an online Rolodex. Yes, it facilitates interaction between people. But that's where the similarities end - Rolodexes just provide contact info. Facebook allows you to contact people and engage with other people's interactions on the platform. That in itself is a step above a Rolodex.
But that's not even the point. A huge part of how we use Facebook lies in how we view our social interactions with the people we care about - it helps answer questions like How are you doing? What are you up to? Are you doing better than I am? Are you happier than I am? How long did it take for you to find that guy after we broke up? Are you two serious or are you still just rebounding from our relationship?
We have a curiosity about the lives other people lead, and it's not just because we care about them. It's also so that we can benchmark our own lives and compare them to feel better (or worse) about ourselves.
Facebook is an identity. A personal one, the window into our normal lives, open only to people we care about in some way (no matter how little). It's our online personal identity just as LinkedIn serves as our online professional identity. In that way it is supremely valuable.
Why else would people curate their Instagram profiles so obsessively? Post only the glamorous parts of their lives? And why is it when we meet someone new, we add them on Facebook? Scroll through their feed, look through their pictures?
This is something Snapchat is fundamentally incapable of attacking. The ephemerality of the platform makes any sort of identity curation impossible.
Then there's the sharing. The whole debate about fake news, etc. has been centered around how people shape their viewpoints and perspectives based on what their friends share. In real life, when we're talking to one another, we listen and interpret. This is a natural process.
But the sharing isn't the point. People want to be heard and accepted. Getting likes on a photo activates the same pleasure center in our brain as drugs like cocaine. It's addictive because it feeds our self-esteem, makes us feel appreciated and listened to. It also adds to the whole concept of identity - the dimension of "what do I believe in?"
Rolodexes are hard to uproot/disrupt. It's a chicken and the egg problem - there has to be a compelling enough reason for users to switch (network effects). But identities are damn near impossible to replace, and nobody has been able to do it yet.
I honestly haven't looked at Facebook from a valuation perspective - I don't know if the company deserves the multiple it has on the public market. I'm honestly surprised the multiple isn't higher - based on what people say I'd have expected it to be 40x+.
But I do know that the company isn't going anywhere, and it won't be disrupted the way Facebook took down MySpace (by just "doing it better"). Building another social network won't be enough - Google tried that and failed. It'll be about how the network facilitates interactions. There will have to be something novel about that new platform that causes people to switch over - maybe we feel more emotionally engaged. Maybe it allows for a more pure, more real picture of our daily lives. Maybe it's just on another platform altogether - an enhanced experience built off of a more engaging platform ecosystem (like Magic Leap in AR, etc.)
There was an article written a long time ago when apps were first being developed. Engineers were staring in disbelief as utility apps stagnated and failed while fart apps and apps that make stupid noises were getting millions of downloads. Here's a link: http://kickingbear.com/blog/archives/67
Those engineers lost sight of the point. People use things not for the practical value, but for how those things make us feel. It's why Apple's been so successful. It's why we listen to music. And it's why Facebook isn't going anywhere anytime soon.
This. But then again, we're on WSO instead of reddit. In other words, we are not the average. The average is composed of a shit ton of dumb millennials, old fogeys, and inquisitive relatives, instead of value-adding members to society. Hence facebook will still retain its current user base.
Of course, a slow demise might be in the horizon assuming FB cannot integrate all platforms (i.e. WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus Rift) together. As far as advertising is concerned, Google will still remain king, considering the kind of innovation and policing they do for their search tools, etc.
Basically, it's just a bunch of companies being able to command sky-high valuations because of a lack of transparently available data on user behavior metrics. While FB and Snap are able to mine messages for data, or measure time spent per image, etc. investors and advertising customers find it difficult to translate such data into actual advertising numbers. Google on the other hand, has the easiest measurement metric (clicks) for Adwords, hence the value-add to customers is much more direct. tl;dr: FB and Snap can only sell the advertising snake oil for so long
Yes and yes.
If I told you I had a lemonade stand and was selling shares of that business but by investing you got no say in the decisions of said stand AND the lemonade stand was losing a lot more money than it made YOY and my customer base had flattened out, you'd tell me to GFM. Same applies here, in my opinion.
As another aside, I think there's a massive risk to their valuation-- if they're ever hacked, and I haven't really seen that risk addressed. Imagine if someone, someday leaks millions of people's snaps on the internet via a hacking. It could go to near-worthless literally overnight as people flee the platform and file lawsuits.
"As you record, your hands are free to pet dogs, hug babies or flail around at a concert. You can reach your arms out to people you’re filming, instead of holding your phone up, as Spiegel describes it, “like a wall in front of your face.”
These will sell like gang-busters to the teeny-bopper following for the novelty alone. I'm thinking beyond "Spectacles" but before something as advanced as "Google Glass". If you're travelling somewhere, experiencing something or plan on taking impromptu videos / pictures, I would love to ditch my phone at home and take the glasses out.
You'd be able to experience the moment + share / save the moment, asynchronously, without the interruptions of your virtual life (notifications). You would also lose the anxiety of missing those moments that you might want to share later on.
Fashion Glasses + Camera with Autofocus + 4G Connectivity + Local Storage.
In the future, add Periscope API, add Snapchat API, add Facebook API for live streaming capabilities.