location based blog: The Second Coming Of The Internet IPO

Friday, January 14, 2011

The Second Coming Of The Internet IPO

Most of what I've been saying about valuations here at AVC has been negative. I think we are in a "focus on the upside" phase in the web investing sector and I've been pretty liberal with my thoughts on that.

But when friends have privately asked me whether they should take some of the Facebook shares their Goldman representative has offered them, I mostly tell them I think they should.

I don't think anyone should bet their net worth on Facebook at $50bn, but I think it is a pretty good bet that Facebook will one day be worth more than $50bn. Is it today? Hard to say. I don't have access to Facebook's P&L, cash flows, and balance sheet. But from what I have heard Facebook should do between $1bn and $2bn of EBITDA in 2011 and possibly more. 25x to 50x EBITDA for one of, if not the premier Internet company in the world is not crazy.

And if you just think how much market power (i'm talking driving traffic, audience, brand, attention, value) Facebook has relative to the other Internet services which are valued well north of $50bn, I think it is pretty obvious that there is more value to be created in Facebook stock.

My friend John Battelle has similar thoughts on his blog in a post everyone interested in the second coming of the Internet IPO should read.

How do I reconcile these conflicting thoughts, that the web sector has gotten overheated and that the coming Internet IPOs might in fact be good buys? Well, to be honest, I haven't completely reconciled those thoughts. First of all, we don't know how these deals will be priced. Will Facebook shares be offered to the public at $75bn, $100bn, even higher? We just don't know. And how will Groupon, Demand Media, LinkedIn, Skype, and other offerings be priced? Don't know yet.

But it is very possible that some or all of these deals will be good buys even in the face of an overheated valuation environment. The public Internet names, most of which went public eight to ten years ago (or more) are mostly carrying full but not crazy valuations. If this new crop is priced off of those comps, then they could be worth buying and owning. And, as John points out in his post, if these companies continue to grow rapidly and throw off ever larger amounts of cash, then they could easily be worth well north of what they are worth today.

In the spirit of complete transparency, I do not plan to purchase any of these offerings. I have plenty of personal exposure to the web sector right now and am adding to it every day via our firm and other private deals and funds I am part of.

I don't particularly like to buy and own public stocks unless we are in a really down market and I see unbelievable values. So I am not going to be calling the banks and asking for allocations. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't.

But whatever you do, make sure to do your work and understand what the price is and that it makes sense. Blindly buying something just because it is "hot" is never a good idea.