Facebook上市价值大家来估算

2012-05-18 00:00:00来源：FT中文网

　　 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%。

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