LIFESTYLE
What is clearer is that even without Zuckerberg at their side, Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, and finance director David Ebersman have an impressive script to read to investors
'You have a company with a visionary and you can't put your vision on the visionary," complained Larry Haverty of the US asset manager GAMCO.
Haverty was one of more than 100 investors who showed up last Tuesday for the Boston leg of Facebook's roadshow, the nationwide tour that founder Mark Zuckerberg and his top lieutenants are taking to persuade fund managers to buy shares in what could be a record $96bn (pounds 60bn) flotation by the social networking site.
Except that Zuckerberg, who turns 28 tomorrow, did not show up. It is not clear whether he will show his face - as he did in New York on the first day of the tour - in Chicago, Kansas or Denver, some of the cities that Facebook and its advisers are scheduled to roll into this week. The first time many buyers of Facebook shares will see the company's founder is on Friday, when he is expected to ring the bell at New York's Nasdaq exchange to mark the first day of trading.
The absence of Zuckerberg from the presentation at the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston illustrates the central conundrum facing investors over the next four days. Having established Facebook as the platform that almost 1bn people use to communicate and org-anise their lives online, will the Harvard University drop-out run Facebook in a way that makes the world's largest social networking site a good investment?
The question matters be-cause Zuckerberg will control 57pc of the voting rights at the company once it is public. "He is a product genius," said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. "But is he ready to be the chairman and chief executive of a $90bn company?"
What is clearer is that even without Zuckerberg at their side, Facebook's chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, and finance director David Ebersman have an impressive script to read to investors. At the end of March, the site had 901m people using it on a monthly basis, 33pc more than a year earlier. Daily users jumped 41pc to 526m in the same period thanks to the explosive popularity of Apple iPhones, iPads and Android-based phones. Profits, meanwhile, more than tripled over the past three years to $1bn.
But as the eagerly awaited flotation approaches, investors are asking whether Facebook can sustain the profits acceleration. There is little doubt that Facebook looks well positioned to benefit as companies shift more of their advertising spend online - forecast to reach $120bn in 2015 from $68bn in 2010, according to technology research firm IDC.
The question, say analysts, is how aggressively will those advertising dollars be chased by Zuckerberg, a self-proclaimed hacker whose mission over the past eight years has been to amass users and ensure they stay on the site as long as possible.
In its prospectus, Facebook insists that advertising can "enhance the user experience while providing an attractive return for advertisers". The introduction of targeted advertising and products such as sponsored stories has not, so far at least, prompted many users to ditch their accounts.
Pachter of Wedbush, one of a handful of financial analysts who have already started producing research on Facebook, is sanguine: "The asset Facebook has is more information on 900m people than any one company ever has. If they are judicious about how they use it, and tailor their advertising to it, they will do well."
Although the company admits it will not be able to keep hoovering up users in the way it has since 2004, history suggests that Zuckerberg's focus will remain squarely on building a platform that lasts. Having a horizon divided into years, if not decades, rather than the quarters that Wall Street chops the world into, has its defenders.
"You have to look at this on a multi-year basis," says Arvind Bhatia, an analyst at stockbroker Sterne Agee. "They've said they want to focus on the user and that is what you should want as an investor. Short-term they may make some decisions that might not be in line, but a lot of people tell me that they want Facebook to be one of the core holdings in their portfolio."
The fund managers, who will decide whether to invest the pensions of hundreds of millions of people into Facebook, were given a glimpse of what this means in practice by the company's results for the first three months of the year. Profits dropped 12pc to $205m as the company, which Zuckerberg founded while still a student at Harvard University, hired more employees, built data centres and spent more on marketing.
The importance of making users the prize is a view given greater weight by internet shipwrecks such as MySpace that have sunk or others, such as Yahoo, that are threatening to do so. Zuckerberg knows that to grow, and at the very least maintain its army of users, Facebook needs to remain alive and responsive to changes in the way people are communicating online. The most striking, as well as potentially disruptive, change for Facebook over the past 12 months has been the rapid increase in people accessing their accounts from phones rather than PCs. The company has said that people coming to Facebook through mobile will drive their future growth.
That Facebook is focused on this was underlined last month when it paid $1bn for Instagram, the tiny company behind an app that allows users to share photos on their smartphones. "If Facebook were being created today it would launch as a mobile app," argues Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner. "Developing it for the PC would be the last on the list."
But it is also a development that last week brought the anxieties about whether Facebook can squeeze advertising profits from these users into sharp relief. In its latest update to its prospectus, Facebook warned that the growth of mobile users is far outpacing the "number of ads delivered".
Gartenberg says the explanation is a simple one and, for some would-be shareholders, an alarming one: "There's not really any advertising on mobile. They haven't even started yet," he explains.
Facebook also faces brutal competition for those advertising revenues from Google, Microsoft and plenty of other companies besides.
What Facebook's mobile future looks like will be a key consideration as investors weigh up whether to buy one of the 337.4m shares the company plans to sell for as much as $35 each on Thursday night. Should they go for that much, shareholders will be paying 99 times Facebook's earnings to become an owner - a steeper multiple than 99pc of the companies in the S&P 500 index.
"Whichever way you look at the valuation, it will look expensive," says Bhatia of Sterne Agee. "I just think that Facebook is so unique that the traditional metrics don't work."
That is an opinion that will make some investors feel queasy but, again, it is something they will have to consider this week. Has the company, as one analyst put it, established a big enough moat between itself and future competitors to ensure it is here to stay, or could it vanish in 10 years? Warren Buffett says he does not know what it will look like in a decade, which is why he will not be on the shareholder register.
And for every trump card Facebook can play: its user base, the possibility of tapping China's internet users and Zuckerberg's vision, there is a matching list of worries. The power Zuckerberg will wield, concerns over users' privacy and lack of mobile advertising will be near the top of the list.
Haverty of GAMCO says he has yet to make up his mind whether to buy. Perhaps having Zuckerberg at the Boston presentation would have helped.
Somebody misbehaved with Alia Bhatt on Highway sets then Imtiaz Ali had to...
Zomato CEO Deepinder Goyal reveals twist behind Rs 200000 job fee, closes application window
Days after Ratan Tata's demise, Tata Group's Rs 131000 crore company inks pact with ADB for...
WATCH: Woman makes Biryani with Parle-G biscuits, viral video fumes internet
Only train in India in which passengers can travel for FREE; check route, timings and more
'Justice for biryani': Parle-G biryani takes internet by storm, video goes viral
DNA TV Show: Why Gautam Adani charged with bribery and fraud in US
IND vs AUS: Records Virat Kohli can break during Border-Gavaskar Trophy
Diljit Dosanjh fans get angry over Ananya Panday's birthday post for her grandmother, here's why
Reddit suffers outage with ‘upstream connect error’ message, says 'currently investigating...'
Border-Gavaskar Trophy: How has Jasprit Bumrah fared in Tests in Australia?
Delhi records coldest night of the season, temp drops to...
Crossing the Line: Ukraine's Use of Storm Shadow Missiles and the Escalation of Conflict
When Malaika Arora talked about the controversial ‘instant pleasure’ ad, it was for…
This is the world’s most expensive shopping street, not Fifth Avenue, New Bond Street, it is...
Big setback for Gautam Adani, Kenya cancels Rs 6216 crore deal with Adani Group due to...
Viral video: Man’s jugaad to stay warm in winter will leave you SHOCKED, watch here
Hinduja Group firm gets key approval for acquisition of Anil Ambani's debt-ridden Reliance Capital
Viral video: Middle-Class man lives dream of having tea at Taj Hotel, netizens applauds
Shloka Mehta looks stunning in white floral kurta as she clicked with Akash Ambani, it costs Rs....
Who is Sagar Adani, Gautam Adani's nephew, accused of bribery, fraud charges in US?
PayPal down: Several users face issue while logging into accounts, say 'no one could...'
IND vs AUS: Jasprit Bumrah, Pat Cummins eye historic captaincy milestone in Perth Test
BGT 2024, Ind vs Aus: Can Shubhman Gill be the new Cheteshwar Pujara? Is he really ready?
The Ultimate Guide to Luxury Gifting: Discover Heirloom Pashmina by Pashmina.com
Effortless Relocations: The Perks Of Professional Removalists In Melbourne
Watch: Pakistan fan with 'Imran Khan' poster asked to leave Hobart stadium in Australia
International Criminal Court issues arrest warrant against Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu for...
What is demisexuality? Everything you need to know about this lesser-known sexual orientation
WATCH: World’s shortest woman meets world’s tallest woman, video goes viral
IND vs AUS 1st Test: Predicted playing XIs, Perth weather forecast and pitch report
IND vs AUS: When will Rohit Sharma join India squad? Check latest update
'Scam 2024': Diljit Dosanjh lookalike pranks people on Pune streets, video goes viral
Delhi Air Pollution: Centre announces staggered work timings for govt employees; check details
Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio loses nearly 80 lakh subscribers in just 30 days, BSNL adds...
IND vs AUS, 1st Test Dream11 prediction: Fantasy cricket tips for India vs Australia match
This country has most expensive passport in world, not US, UK, UAE, it costs Rs...
Amitabh Bachchan opens up on Aishwarya Rai-Abhishek Bachchan divorce rumours
Amid rising air pollution, Delhi-NCR's crematorium records cleanest air; check AQI here
Revolutionising Medical Imaging: Venudhar Rao Hajari’s impact on healthcare technology
Abhishek Gupta and Onevision Media: Scaling brands on social media
Video shows Korean girl eating jalebi for first time, her reaction to Indian sweet goes viral
Cristiano Ronaldo confirms THIS YouTube star as his next guest, says, 'Will break Internet'
Delhi Assembly Elections: AAP releases first list of 11 candidates for 2025 polls
Adani Group's FIRST REACTION after US indicts Gautam Adani in alleged bribery case
Instagram introduces new feature, know how to reset app's algorithm, change your feed
No mention of Aaradhya Bachchan in Amitabh Bachchan's post on birthdays, it happened recently
Oppo Find X8 and X8 Pro launched in India, check specifications, price, other details
Charges against Gautam Adani: BJP's scathing attack on Congress, questions timing of development
Jasprit Bumrah's BIG statement on taking up Perth test captaincy, says, 'tactically better...'
Blackout on breaks: Company imposes no-sick-leave policy until 2025
Drug-laden terrorists on India's western, northern frontiers
Mohammad Shami trolls Sanjay Manjrekar over IPL auction bid prediction, says, 'Baba ki...'
IND vs AUS Test: When and where to watch 1st match of Border-Gavaskar trophy, know details here
CAQM amends Grap Stages III, IV, enforces stricter measures in Delhi-NCR amid air pollution woes
Malayalam actor Meghanathan passes away at 60 after suffering from...
Adani Green Energy's FIRST reaction after US indicts Gautam Adani in alleged bribery case
'Keep me out of...': Pakistani Instagram star Mathira on MMS leak controversy
Delhi Air Pollution: AQI marginally improves from 'severe' to 'very poor' category
Meet actress who worked with Alia Bhatt, was asked to 'compromise', connected to Aishwarya Rai by..
Aishwarya Rai’s remark on Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘habits’ goes viral amid divorce rumours with Abhishek