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points by JumpCrisscross 3 days ago | 0 comments
> google launched at i dunno a 1bn market cap and grew as the internet grew

Google closed its first trading day "worth more than $25 billion" [1] with $1.5bn revenues, up 234% from 2002's $440mm [2]. That's a 16x revenue multiple, 0.07 growth adjusted [3].

On a similar revenue multiple, Anthropic's $16.3bn half-year earnings are worth $543 billion. Adjust for Anthropic's 1,400% YoY growth and you're well over $3 trillion.

Obviously, it's a lot harder to grow at a thousand percent from a $16bn baseline versus a few billion. But purely on a multiple basis, Anthropic is in a similar ballpark as Google.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/19/technology/shares-of-goog...

[2] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312504...

[3] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pegratio.asp

[–] extraextra 3 days ago
If only it was that simple, to switch multiples around between random companies and come up with valuations

Google was profitable, free cash flow positive and had no debts basically

Anthropic is burning money by the millisecond, no profits, free cash flow negative and has lots of debts & commitments

[–] ygghutttff 3 days ago
Correct does that poster actually know what comparables are?

Comparables are not by peer group or sector.

It’s cash flows, growth and risk bud. If you want to do peer group - go ahead - just don’t forget to control for differences..

Price to sales multiples are internally inconsistent by definition.

[–] JumpCrisscross 3 days ago
Is there an internet rule for folks asking if someone else knows something following it with a completely wrong definition of that thing?
[–] solyin 2 days ago
It happens so often that it's an Internet meme with its own subreddit by this point.

No You're Thinking Of.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NYTO/

[–] runako 3 days ago
As another check, SpaceX is trading at ~62x sales with a growth rate in the 30% range. Assigning the same sales multiple puts Anthropic at ~$2T market cap. Add in a factor for much faster growth (and non-GAAP profitability) and $3T is a really easy place to end up.
[–] extraextra 3 days ago
Sure, you can throw any numbers around, if you wish to get any valuation you want.

In reality, a valuation based on revenue (sales) is bonkers to begin with, but even worse when you consider that Anthropic has so much debt that it doesn't have positive equity value, it's in a deficit ("When liabilities attached to an asset exceed its value, the difference is called a deficit and the asset is informally said to be "underwater" or "upside-down""). At least SpaceX has more assets than liabilities.

[–] runako 3 days ago
There are a set of mistakes in what you wrote, but

> SpaceX has more assets than liabilities.

is definitely a choice thing to write on the day SpaceX announced a $40B debt deal to purchase compute to run other companies' models. Based on available information, this will put SpaceX into a place where it has more liabilities than assets.

[–] extraextra 3 days ago
Lol

You're speculating what SpaceX balance sheet might be, like they haven't just released MRQ earnings report last week

Just go read it and you'll see you're wrong even after you subtract that 40 billion SPV https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026...

[–] runako 3 days ago
Fair, I misread the filing.

Larger point stands. SpaceX is commanding a 62x sales multiple, whether or not you personally believe price:sales should be relevant. SpaceX's AI operation is smaller and growing slower than Anthropic's. It's reasonable to expect investors to benchmark Anthropic against SpaceX, it would be silly not to do so. A normal thing one would expect investors to do is assign a higher multiple to a company that grows faster.

[–] qwytw 3 days ago
But the question is not so much if they can IPO at those prices but rather if the valuations are sustainable over a couple of years. If they are priced to perfection there isn't much left for public investors besides huge risk that something might not work out 100% as expected.
[–] runako 3 days ago
I mean, yes. You are raising points, using Wall Street lingo, that are rightfully raised about every IPO, ever.

To be clear: I do not have a financial interest in this, and will not be buying the IPO. I very much am just describing the world as it is.

[–] extraextra 3 days ago
Larger point doesn't stand, price/sales is as useful of a metric like measuring speed as mass/distance. "Yes, my speed is 100kg/10 meters".

Some people will benchmark Anthropic vs. SpaceX, that doesn't make it a smart approach.

A normal thing is to consider risk, liabilities, cashflow, how diversified revenue streams are etc., and other things which you seem to be missing.

I'm not trying to dissuade you from buying it. I'm just saying that the reasons you give are wrong.

[–] runako 3 days ago
> Some people will benchmark Anthropic vs. SpaceX, that doesn't make it a smart approach.

Yeah, I would not pay 62x sales for SpaceX. And I don't buy IPOs. I'm not endorsing these values, I am saying benchmarking against peers is what investors commonly do.

> A normal thing is to consider risk, liabilities, cashflow, how diversified revenue streams are etc., and other things which you seem to be missing.

I'm not missing those things, I am not including them here because being "right" is rarely how markets value companies. (Also because the rest of that stuff is in the S-1.)

It's possible to build a "correct" model of a high-growth high-tech company that looks primarily at risk, liabilities, cashflow, and diversity of revenue streams. That model might put Anthropic at (say) a $100B valuation. That "correct" model is going to be less predictive than a model that starts from what similar firms are trading at in public markets. I personally am more interested in predictive power than correctness when evaluating stocks.

[–] xvector 3 days ago
If your hyper growth startup does not have more liabilities than assets, it has fucked up.
[–] extraextra 3 days ago
Hahaha

Someone on a different forum fed the S-1 in Fable and it said "Shows a massive “loss” on paper, but that’s mostly an accounting effect from the company’s value going up"

Funniest shit I've read all day