Thanks to the money printing mania of the world’s central bankers, the Wall Street casino has gone global. Accordingly, mindless speculation and momentum chasing have reached new absurdities, as exemplified by the red hot roster of international high flyers below.
The financial data for the top name on the list, Twitter, is all that is required to remind us that once again markets are trading in the nosebleed section of history, rivaling even the madness of March 2000. Currently, Twitter (TWTR) is valued at $31 billion. That’s 18X revenue, but the catch is that the revenue in question is it’s lifetime bookings over the 18 quarters since Q1 2010.
When it comes to profits, the numbers are not nearly so promising! For the LTM period ending in June, TWTR booked $974 million of revenue and $1.7 billion of operating expense. That why “NM†shows up in its LTM ratio of enterprise value to EBITDA. It turns out that its EBITDA was -$704 million. In fact, its R&D expense alone was 83% of revenues.
That’s not the real fantasy, however. The sell-side hockey sticks indicate that TWTR’s forward multiple is only 86.6X projected EBITDA. Let’s see. At its current total enterprise value, this implies it will generate $350 million of positive EBITDA in the next 12 months—or a $1 billion favorable swing from the LTM number.
Just say its going to take some doing—not to say a miracle. During Q2 EBITDA was -$104 million compared to -$13 million in the year ago June quarter. So TWTR’s cash profit numbers are marching to the rear at a furious pace, but never mind. It’s EBITDA will soar skyward any moment now, making it 86.6X forward multiple completely rational….. Right.
Needless to say, this kind of speculative lunacy would never occur on the free market under a regime of honest price discovery. Yes, markets would discount at hefty multiples the future value of unusually promising and innovative enterprises with demonstrated capacity to convert revenues into profits.
