Tech company investors hate earnings. As soon as you get them you can value a company. Best to not have them so you can continue to evaluate the company on “growth” and “eyeballs” and “market share.

Netflix (NFLX) is one I am tracking as a bell weather for “loss of faith in the dream.”
It’s got a p/e of 246 (ugh!) and is a full double this year alone.

Yes, NFLX is down since August, but it’s got a very loooong way to fall if it ever decides to get around to getting back to a fair value p/e or 10 or 15.
On the other side of the hope ledger, we find that Twitter has been a real destroyer of capital and dreams.

That’s a roughly 50% loser from the peak…and probably will go a lot further.  Of course it doesn’t even have a p/e to report because it’s lacking a full year of positive ‘e’ to put in the equation.
But it does have a market capitalization of $19 billion.  As soon as TWTR earns $10 million over the course of an entire year, finally, then it will sport a p/e of  1,900.  But if it could earn $100M, then the p/e would shrink to “just” 190.  To justify this company in a long-term portfolio you’d want to see a p/e in the vicinity of 15-20…and that would require earnings of ~$1 – $1.2 billion.
This is why tech company investors hate earnings.  As soon as you get them you can value a company.  Best to not have them so you can continue to evaluate the company on “growth” and “eyeballs” and “market share.”

Chris