Meta Platforms Is Blowing Through Billions Of Dollars In Free Cash Flow. Will The Metaverse Bet Pay Off?

In 1990, a brand new tech start-up was spun out of Apple to invent the longer term.

Basic Magic, because it was known as, was a veritable dream manufacturing unit.

Over the course of its 12-year existence, its founders—former Apple engineers who had helped convey the unique Macintosh laptop to fruition—developed applied sciences and purposes that wouldn’t be in widespread use for a number of extra years. Chief amongst them was a precursor to the smartphone, however greater than that, the Basic Magic group foresaw the age of cell computing in totality, full with social media, e-commerce and emojis.

Alas, nobody purchased its merchandise, and Basic Magic was pressured to shut store in 2002, a few years earlier than anybody was friended on “TheFacebook” and 5 years earlier than Steve Jobs launched the iPhone to the world.

Trendy historical past is stuffed with innovations and applied sciences that failed not as a result of they have been inherently flawed however as a result of they hit the market a number of years too early. Earlier than the iPad, there was the Microsoft Pill (launched approach again in 2001). Earlier than Bitcoin, there was Bit Gold (conceived in 1998).

Final week, autonomous automobile start-up Argo AI introduced it was shutting down after solely 5 years, with monetary backer Ford saying that commercialization of the expertise is “further out than originally anticipated.”

The query now on many traders’ minds is: Will Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse challenge observe the identical path as Basic Magic and Argo AI, or will it go within the route of the iPhone?

FAANG No Extra?

Ever since Zuckerberg announced his company’s pivot greater than a 12 months in the past (he would formally change the title from Fb to Meta Platforms in October 2021 to mirror the brand new emphasis), the way in which ahead has been difficult at finest.

Over the previous couple of years, Meta has generated billions of {dollars} in free money stream (FCF), almost all of it now spent on creating metaverse purposes that, as of now, don’t look like worthwhile. Final week the corporate reported FCF of solely $316 million within the third quarter, down considerably from $12.7 billion on the finish of 2021.

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