Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ryanatkn 4462 days ago
A premium? Figures I saw were 10M units at $300. That's 0.666x projected sales, when 2-3x is the norm for mature companies.
2 comments

Not sure what you're referring to, re: 10 million units. They haven't sold anywhere near that.

Currently their price to sales ratio is closer to 150. Facebook paid a massive premium no matter how you cut it. Even if they grow sales ten fold over the next three years, they'll still have paid a premium. I don't think the Oculus purchase can be justified in any near-term financial regard, it's a very long term bet.

"Oculus has said it will start selling a consumer product in 2014, and till now has shipped an impressive 60,000 units to developers at $350 each"

http://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2014/03/25/facebooks-...

I qualified it as 0.666x projected sales (intentionally not rounded >:), so yeah that 10M was a projected figure, which unfortunately I can't find the source for. By the end of 2015 I think Oculus will look like a steal, unless the goodwill is shot.
2-3x profit, right, not revenue? 10m units at $300 would not land anywhere near 3 billion in profits once you get to the bottom line. Lots of licensing fees coming up though.
No, revenue. For example Google's P/E (the equivalent profit ratio) is currently 31.4, and that's not including the control premium.
Comparing the cost multiple for a private company's acquisition to a P/E ratio of a public stock is way different and not really a fair comparison.
Generally the starting point for any tech acquisition is 3x - 5x revenue multiplier. Occulus is hardware so their margins are lower than software, pushing them closer to the 3x mark.
It's far from precise but I'd maintain it's useful to illustrate that if Oculus is a success, Facebook made a great buy.