

FTC Approves Instagram Acquisition - relation
http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2012/08/instagram.shtm

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calvinlough
At the bottom of the press release: "Like the FTC on Facebook, follow us on
Twitter..."

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jrockway
How dare the US government use the products of US companies!

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aresant
Keep seeing that the deal is "now worth $747 million"

No, it was always $300,000,000 in CASH plus 22,999,412 FB SHARES.

That amount of shares happens to be around 1% of FB's stock.

I love those numbers.

Can you imagine the brass balls it took to ask for 1% of FB a month before
they IPO'd on top of $300m cash?

That is an even more fun headline than "Acquired for $1b".

Stupid media.

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memnips
I was the "now worth $747 million" commenter! I mean - at closing today - it's
worth that. As in, if they could sell their newly owned stock today that's
what they would have.

The original deal was "valued" at $1bn. It closed at a value closer to $747
million.

Instagram is doing just fine either way.

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ChuckMcM
I think you missed the parent's point here, the deal was 300M cash and 1% of
Facebook. It is still that as far as I can tell. It was _reported_ as a $1B
deal because if you did the math at the time that was what you got. Now in say
5 years if you do the math again you will get another number, could be a
bigger number, could be smaller, but it will still be 1% (caveat new stock
issuing). You could say it was a 70 degree deal on the 9th of April because
that was the temperature in Palo Alto then but only a 63 degree deal now. Ok,
that's a silly way to measure it but it illustrates the point the parent was
making.

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memnips
I guess I'm still missing it. I think measuring economic deals in dollars is
pretty sensible. I'm not implying the terms of the deal have changed, however
the value of the deal has changed MATERIALLY since it was announced to
approved.

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ChuckMcM
You are just using a different way to describe the deal. The grandparent
described it "$300M cash plus 1% of Facebook" that description of the deal was
accurate when it was announced and it is still accurate. You choose to measure
it as "30M * FBStockPrice-in-dollars + 300M * $1 cash" which is also accurate
but it is not a 'stable' definition because it varies day to day.

The point the parent was making (IMO) was that the _terms_ of the deal haven't
changed, the point you are making is that the _value_ of the deal is changing.
When the deal was made part stock (variable) and part cash (invariable) the
folks at Instagram 'bought in' or agreed to the fact that the value would vary
with FB's price so the fact that the stock component is worth half what it
was, may not have been 'expected' but it was already accounted for.

The discussion about stock collars (a financial mechanism that keeps the
variable bit within some bounds between the time the deal is made and when it
closes), suggested the Instagram guys could have made a better deal for
themselves, but we don't know, perhaps they (Instagram) felt that $300M was
fine even if FB went to 0 (it won't but its an example).

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memnips
The deal is now worth $747 million. Congrats, Instagram. :)

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ajaimk
The real question is do the Instagram founders, employees and investors still
approve of the acquisition?

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jonursenbach
They're still getting hundreds of millions of dollars for a zero revenue
product. If they don't approve at this point, they're idiots.

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joering2
What a stupid thinking, overfilled with greed.

If I give you $100 million to kill your friend and you say "no" -- is that
making you an idiot??

I am asking seriously.

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stephen_g
Seriously, how does your hypothetical situation relate in any way to what was
asked? How exactly do you equate selling a company to murder?

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finkin1
Any idea what was pulled in the brackets?

"Facebook proposes to acquire Instagram through [ ]."

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mrjbq7
Why is this news? Did anyone really think that it wouldn't get approved?

