<story><title>Facebook Bankers Secretly Cut FB Revenue Estimates In Middle Of IPO Roadshow</title><url>http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/facebook-bankers-secretly-cut-facebook-revenue-estimates-middle-133648905.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>JumpCrisscross</author><text>The original Reuters article does a better job explaining this than the link-bait title here: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USBRE84L06920120522&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USBRE84L06920120522&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;FB amended their S-1 to lower revenue forecasts. Following that, a research analyst at Morgan Stanley cut his revenue forecast on FB close to their IPO. Nothing here should fire anyone up.&lt;p&gt;Equity research must be conducted independently of the investment bankers&apos; non-public information. Given that they are opinions assembled from public data I don&apos;t see how disclosing it only to clients is a problem. If you want to publish a newsletter with stock tips and only disclose it to paying clients that is your prerogative, too.</text></comment>
<story><title>Facebook Bankers Secretly Cut FB Revenue Estimates In Middle Of IPO Roadshow</title><url>http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/facebook-bankers-secretly-cut-facebook-revenue-estimates-middle-133648905.html</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>chernevik</author><text>The bankers surely know how disastrous something like this would be.  Facebook has been aggressively indifferent to this whole process, which involves a lot of complexity both in decision making and communication.  &quot;Don&apos;t make the analysts look bad&quot; is an important rule, but one that&apos;s easy to miss unless you spend some time thinking through your communications with the market.&lt;p&gt;If FB&apos;s initial analyst communications emphasized optimism over credibility and deliverability, or FB was impatient with questions casting doubt, the analysts may have had reason to start with high estimates.  The May 9 filing comes out and reveals those to be implausible, and they have to dial back to avoid looking silly or as if they&apos;re pumping the stock.&lt;p&gt;If FB management hadn&apos;t spent a lot of time thinking about the relationships between the analysts and the investors, they may have missed the point that those investors are the analysts&apos; ultimate clients.  If they didn&apos;t spend much time with the analysts, they may have neglected building relationships where they could subtly signal issues without tripping regulatory problems.&lt;p&gt;Or the analysts were idiots and screwed up the biggest assignments of their lives.&lt;p&gt;Is all this shady company / banker / investor communication good?  No, but this is how it&apos;s done right now, and if you want your partners to do well you have to work within the rules of the road.  It isn&apos;t clear to me that Facebook took the time to do that.</text></comment>