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Comment by westpfelia | Hacker News Reader

Not when compared to the likes of Tesla and Palantir. But once upon a time a P/E of 35 was insane. For meta I still feel like its too much. Apple.. Well less so.

The question is do you think you can get 35 years of this level of earnings out of a company. If yes or more then it makes sense. But a whole hell of a lot can happen in 35 years.

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Meta makes 95%+ of its revenue on their ads. Whats crazy is that they own the platforms that most of their ads run on. Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc. How do we know they're not fudging the stats on the ads? They're already known not to be trusted. How has a third party Ad Verification system not popped up by now. Not for just Meta but for all Ad networks.

Game out your theory that they are overstating stats. It wouldn't matter if they were. Individual advertisers are getting enough value in downstream effects (actual sales) that they are paying what they are paying.

Presumably the revenue is something that ends up in a bank account. So an audit would make sure that number is accurate.

But I agree with the general problem of auditing advertising and performance. I've tried advertising on FB and my metrics never showed half of the engagement that they claimed.

The advertisers can see the traffic coming in from clicks, I would think. There would remain some opportunity for fraud by FB if some of the ad money is just for impressions but it seems like it would be difficult to keep click rate up while shorting the buyer on impressions.

Does P/E ratio (example you gave: 35) actually equate to years of profitability (also example you gave: 35 years)?

It means you’d need 35 years of earnings to equal the price paid today.

So, yeah it’s sort of like using that logic. Not exact as a dollar 35 years from now isn’t now, but you get the gist.

Thanks!

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