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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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。
