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Facebook The Courts

Facebook Rises After Lawsuit Dismissal, Hits $1 Trillion Value (cnbc.com) 49

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
Facebook shares posted their biggest intraday gain in two months after it won a dismissal of two antitrust cases, pushing its market value above $1 trillion for the first time. The social-media giant jumped as much as 4.4%, the most since April 29 after a judge granted Facebook's request to dismiss the complaints filed last year by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general. Reader phalse phace writes: A federal court on Monday dismissed the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust complaint against Facebook, dealing a major setback for the agency's complaint that could have resulted in Facebook divesting Instagram and WhatsApp.

"Although the Court does not agree with all of Facebook's contentions here, it ultimately concurs that the agency's complaint is legally insufficient and must therefore be dismissed," reads the filing from U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. "The FTC has failed to plead enough facts to plausibly establish a necessary element of all of its Section 2 claims -- namely, that Facebook has monopoly power in the market for Personal Social Networking (PSN) Services." The court dismissed the complaint, not the case, meaning the FTC could file its complaint once again.
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Facebook Rises After Lawsuit Dismissal, Hits $1 Trillion Value More

Facebook Rises After Lawsuit Dismissal, Hits $1 Trillion Value

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  • Fundamentals? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    How does a massively large company maintain a PE of around 30 with advertising as their main source of revenue?
    • The stock market is not the economy.
    • No idea. But, FB getting a higher value off of, supposedly, dodging some lawsuits ought to mean that there is going to be even more available when they get into settlements for all of their sex trafficking cases. While they've been busy censoring one end of the political spectrum they've been busy providing "meat" for the participants of the rest. Go get them.

  • 1 Trillion dollars?! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Monday June 28, 2021 @04:34PM (#61530966) Homepage Journal

    Imagine how much health care the US could provide for its citizens with that much money.

    Why do Democrats propose raising taxes on millionaires (i.e. people) when the real money is in the corporations?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

      Because Republicans are dead set against taxing corporations, even more so than they are against taxing billionaires.

      • Re:1 Trillion dollars?! (Score:4, Insightful)

        by gillbates ( 106458 ) on Monday June 28, 2021 @05:14PM (#61531134) Homepage Journal

        The Republicans are a political minority in the House and Senate, and the Democrats control the White House.

        But go ahead, blame the Republicans for what the Democrats aren't doing.

        I find it a bit interesting that, as much as progressives bitch and moan about how we're not like Europe, their own party won't back them up when it comes to making meaningful social change. The Europeans think nothing of a 25% tax rate, and while the Democrats talk loudly about "taxing the rich", when they actually get a majority they do nothing except some token rearrangement of existing tax law. At this point, they could implement socialized medicine without a single Republican vote, and they're proposing estate tax changes?

        Can some progressive enlighten me as to why Democrats have dropped the ball?

        • Re:1 Trillion dollars?! (Score:4, Informative)

          by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Monday June 28, 2021 @05:52PM (#61531288) Journal

          So long as the filibuster remains, Republicans have an effective veto. It's that simple.

          • So long as the filibuster remains, Republicans have an effective veto. It's that simple.

            Unless you think the democrats will hold power forever, you really might think carefully about taking the minorities bit of check on power away....

            The Dems used it plenty when they were in the minority of the senate.

            The Dems got rid of a lot of rules before the Republicans had control last time...and they paid for it when the reps took over..(voting for judges, etc.)

            Democrates are razor thin and there's every chance

            • I'm not arguing for or against the filibuster, I'm saying so long as it remains, the Dems effectively do not control the Senate, save for confirmations, where the filibuster has been eliminated. The first true Senate filibuster didn't occur until 1837, so nearly fifty years after the US Senate was established. The House established rules to limit filibusters. So while it's been around a long time, it wasn't around forever, and Congress seemed to function reasonably well before filibuster's became the primar

        • The Dems can't do squat without killing that.

          Now mind you, the Republicans are a political minority in the House in the sense that they have continuously gotten fewer votes while somehow holding onto seats (hurray for Gerrymandering!), and voter suppression is the only thing keeping them in the Senate (how else does a party that unpopular with black folk hold Senate seats in Missouri with it's 30% black population).

          Even with all that they're losing ground as the Boomers age out of voting (read:die).

          • I find it odd that as much noise as they made about killing the filibuster, they did not do so.

            It's almost as if there was some sort of tacit agreement to do nothing... as if to wield power, rather than enact the will of the people, was what they were truly seeking all along.

        • The Republicans are a political minority in the House and Senate, and the Democrats control the White House.

          However adjusting tax rates did come up in the most recent reconciliation bill for consideration. Reconciliation isn't a straight forward process for pretty much Joe Manchin. Republicans faced just as much opposition in their reconciliation that they eventually passed that gave us the current rates on corporations. So I think what a ton of people confuse as hesitation is a failure to understand the not so straight forward path that this process has.

          But go ahead, blame the Republicans for what the Democrats aren't doing.

          Yeah it gets old. And you're mostly right on the point

          • It's a delicate balancing act when it comes to taxes. Part 1, they don't want to piss off the corporations and the wealthy that fund their re-election campaigns. Part 2, they don't want to piss of the people who vote. Part 3, they don't want to piss off enough the people who don't vote such that they will come out of the woodwork and actually vote.

        • You'd be hard-pressed to call the Ds progressive. The leadership, especially, is centrist and inertial to a fault. If they were delivering actual progress, they'd be sweeping up elections at all levels, even against the headwinds of gerrymandering, voter suppression, and slanted distribution of Senate and Electoral College representatives.

          Apart from the lack of a cohesive vision, the party isn't de facto in control of the Senate either. To pass a bill they'd need 48 out of 48 of their Senators, 2 of the 2 i

        • Right now the majority is very very razor thin. It's 50/50 with the vice president resolving the tie. Now, some further on the progressive side thinks this should mean that the entire backlog of the Christmas wish-list must be passed as soon as possible, but quite a lot of those 50 senators are moderates who have far more in common with moderate Republicans than with the progressives.

          Now even when they agree, there's still the supermajority to be passed for many issues, especially tax issues. But if they

        • Because progressive policies are antithetical to humanity -- and even Democrats can smell that rat. Not being like the EU ought to be considered a point of pride -- especially since Europe has long been the starting point of most of humanities' disastrous wars and social changes: e.g., 100yrs war, Napoleonic war, WW1, WW2, NAZI, communism, etc.

    • The real money is in both the 1% wealthy people and the mega-corporations.

      Also, can we change what we call Facebook from now on? They're an anti-social media network since they don't pay their fair share of taxes.

    • How much health care do you get for 1T? Considering that the US currently spends over 2T per year on health care, I would imagine the answer is "Not that much" .

      On the plus side, after a few months you have completely run through all of Facebook's wealth, and nobody will ever need to facebook ever again.

      This leaves aside the problem of actually confiscating all of Facebook's stock and then selling it at the current value. I imagine the stock would tank about 30 seconds after the government confiscat

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        How much health care do you get for 1T? Considering that the US currently spends over 2T per year on health care, I would imagine the answer is "Not that much" .

        You get more than you get today.

        Over 50% of health care money in the US is spent on administration - mostly because most hospitals and such have more people handling insurance billing than doctors. Imagine that - more money is spent collecting money than on actual health care.

        Thus, $1T can buy a lot of health care over that year, given most of the

    • Sure let's just tax the hell out of people/things we don't like until the revenue goes away. If this actually worked the Soviet Union or every other country that's tried extracting all of this value wouldn't have ruined their economies. I'm sure someone will come in with a "but Sweden" or some such nonsense without realizing that the Swedish corporate tax rates (along with the other so-called socialist Scandinavian countries) were historically lower than the U.S rates up until they were recently lowered dur

    • Imagine how much health care the US could provide for its citizens with that much money.

      About 3 months worth

      https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/NationalHealthAccountsHistorical

      U.S. health care spending grew 4.6 percent in 2019, reaching $3.8 trillion or $11,582 per person.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      You realize how stock valuations work right? Facebook doesn't "have" a trillion dollars in their bank accounts. That "trillion dollars" is just the sum of their outstanding shares multiplied by the current price. But here's the thing: it's not a real number. If every one tried to cash in their shares to turn that valuation into cash, the price would tank, along with the valuation. Poof, that imaginary trillion is gone. It's just one of many metrics for measuring a company, and it looks swell in press rele

      • Right, the problem is there's no better way to measure how rich the shareholders are getting than adding up the shares, because the system is designed explicitly to obfuscate that. What's needed to fix it is a law saying that you can't use any corporate assets for personal use. No more "borrowing" the "corporate" car for your own personal trips; if you can't document a business case (that will stand up in court if necessary) then your use was inappropriate and you should be fined, and the corporation should

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by EvilSS ( 557649 )

          Right, the problem is there's no better way to measure how rich the shareholders are getting than adding up the shares, because the system is designed explicitly to obfuscate that.

          Again, it's fake money. Unless those shareholders sell it's just, well, I was going to say so much paper but these days it's more like so many bits in a storage system somewhere.

          What's needed to fix it is a law saying that you can't use any corporate assets for personal use.

          What on earth does that have to do with stock valuation?

          No more "borrowing" the "corporate" car for your own personal trips; if you can't document a business case (that will stand up in court if necessary) then your use was inappropriate and you should be fined, and the corporation should also be fined. (Otherwise the cost of abuse will almost certainly be lower than the savings.)

          Going out on a limb here and guessing you've never had a company car. In your example using a company car for personal trips is considered taxable income, and if you don't report it, you do get penalized.

          • I'm saying they shouldn't be allowed to use a corporate asset for personal business period. Using the company car for personal use and paying a pittance in taxes is a bullshit dodge because you don't have the pay the full costs.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by EvilSS ( 557649 )
              It's not a pittance, it's based on value of the car (and there is a max value allowed for the car to be considered a work vehicle so it's not like you can do it with a lambo, or even a nice BMW) and what it would cost to lease it for the time you used it. It's not a way to shelter anything, you don't save anything worth going to the effort of doing it over. It's also a pain in the ass to keep track of. And again, I don't see what any of that has to do with stock valuation.

    • Imagine how much health care the US could provide for its citizens with that much money.

      What money? This fundamentally misunderstands the concept of corporate "worth". Joe Shmo has $500 of FB stock via her 401k, but that money is money Joe will likely, in fact, use on her health care.

    • Slight correction to your post; for Q1 2021, page 6 of the 10-Q summary shows total assets =$163.5B of which $64.2B was cash and cash equivalents, not $1T.

      https://www.sec.gov/Archives/e... [sec.gov]

    • Every accountant or individual I know with a Finance background tells me a company doesn't really possess wealth.

      When a company is given a "valuation", they're speaking of the total estimated value it represents -- which is different than a person possessing that many dollars in assets of some sort.

      The link, here, mentions 3 different ways they come up with a corporate valuation:

      https://www.thebalance.com/bus... [thebalance.com]

      Clearly, it can be estimated based on how much infrastructure the company has in place (so in Fac

    • Because taxing a corp accomplishes nothing since the corp just passes the cost on to consumers. Despite legal niceties, a corp is not a person, it is an organization. Taxing a corp simply puts money into the gov'mt and the consumers pick up the tab -- which just hides the tax so far as many citizens are concerned.
  • Microsoft only just broke twice that value, $2T.

    Now imagine you had to re-create the Windows + Office Stack, all the versions of it, all the tens of thousands of device drivers, over the decades. And Azure.

    It's impossible.

    Now imagine you had to re-create Facebook. By comparison it seems pretty trivial. So, it's an amazing trick of efficiently creating a huge valuation.

    • Facebook's tech is mainly intelligence gathering, and running on a massive scale. It isn't front facing, but they can lose entire data centers, and still keep going. They also have developed/refined a lot of items, be it btrfs for filesystems, zstd for efficient compression, even the size of data center racks.

      Yes, a smaller site can do what FB does... look at VK, which runs rings around Facebook when it comes to usability and even privacy, but it is all the infrastructure for harvesting data and handing i

  • Hopefully this leads to the bubble bursting faster.

  • Given that its real value is negative.

  • If you want to read the actual source material yourself, and you like paying 10 per page on PACER, look up:

    Federal court: District of Colombia
    Case: 1:20-cv-03590-JEB
    Document: 73: Memorandum & Opinion
    Direct link: https://ecf.dcd.uscourts.gov/d... [uscourts.gov]
    WARNING: That link costs ~5 USD to click

    You will see the amazing and oft-repeated idiot quote from Judge James E. Boasberg: "Rather, [Personal Social Networking] services are free to use, and the exact metes and bounds of what even constitutes a PSN service... ar

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