Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday January 7

• After stellar year, Facebook stock finds doubters on rising opex, slowing growth (2015F 37% Y/Y, 2014F 57% Y/Y) : Facebook, up 195 percent in two years and trading at a record last month, is starting to draw skeptics in the options market. Options betting on a decline in Facebook cost the most versus bullish contracts since July 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Options with an exercise price 10 percent below the shares cost 3.1 points more than calls and climbed to 3.3 points above on Dec. 23, according to three-month implied-volatility data compiled by Bloomberg. That compares with the one-year average of 1.3 points. “We’re not banking on seeing Facebook repeat the same great performance it had in 2014,” said Uppington, a technology portfolio manager at Lombard Odier in Geneva. His company oversees $50 billion. “It’s also seeing an increase in operating expenses. The company needs to invest in growth to overcome the law of large numbers.” Operating expenses rose in the third quarter at the fastest pace since the first three months of 2013, data compiled by Bloomberg show. The Menlo Park, California-based company has purchased applications such as Instagram and WhatsApp Inc. to increase its appeal to younger users and drive mobile advertising sales. Now analysts predict profit and revenue growth in 2015 won’t keep pace with the increases from last year. Facebook earnings will gain 12 percent this year after nearly doubling in 2014, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales will climb 37 percent after rising 57 percent last year, the projections show.

• Can Apple Do for Wearable Ads What Facebook Did for Mobile? Marketers predict brands will latch onto smartwatches TapSense this week unveiled what its programmatic ads for the soon-to-be-released Apple Watch will look like, exhibiting a buy-one-get-one-free mock offer from Starbucks. It's at least the second tech company to reveal a programmatic offering for wearables in the last few months, coming on the heels of FitAd's debut with Amtrak. This will be a space to watch in 2015—especially if Apple Watch becomes remotely close to as popular as the iPhone. Wearable device sales are generally expected to achieve significant growth over the next few years, according to researchers. Rest assured, marketers will pay to test return on investment with the emerging formats, and the additional revenue stream could be a boon to CEO Tim Cook's company. "Apple has the opportunity to seize this market of wearable ads, just like Facebook has seized mobile," said Esha Shah, manager of mobile strategy and innovation at Fetch. "Hyper-local ads and coupons could be part of that, as should larger ad opportunities, like voice-based mobile search," he added. Indeed, advertisements on one's wrist seem ripe for direct-response opportunities.

• Glassdoor raises $70M, valuation ~ $1B, preps for IPO: Glassdoor Inc, the operator of jobs website Glassdoor.com, said it raised $70 million from Google Capital and existing investors Tiger Global, Battery Ventures and Sutter Hill Ventures. Glassdoor, whose rivals include Monster Worldwide Inc, said it had raised about $160 million so far. Glassdoor has a valuation of close to $1 billion and is planning for an initial public offering, the Wall Street Journal said. Glassdoor said it had more than 27 million registered members worldwide. The company has over 2,000 employer clients including Groupon Inc, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Facebook Inc, Chevron Corp, Procter & Gamble Co and Twitter Inc. Glassdoor raised $50 million in December 2013 from a group led by Tiger Global.

• Payments story#1: Kickstarter abandons Amazon as payment processor, opts for Stripe instead: Crowdsourced fundraising site Kickstarter has dropped Amazon.com Inc as its global payments processor in favor of Stripe, the fast-growing startup used by Twitter Inc, Facebook Inc and Apple Inc. The switch comes as the Internet retailer begins to move clients from its customizable checkout service to an Amazon-branded one. In a blog post on Tuesday, Kickstarter said it made the switch after Amazon decided to drop its Flexible Payments Service, which allows a company to develop its own checkout process. The new Amazon-branded Login and Pay service does not offer as much flexibility. Some analysts have said Amazon has been held back in payments because merchants are wary of handing over customer data to the company, which is rapidly expanding into new areas and competing with sellers. In early December, Stripe raised $70 million from Sequoia Capital and other investors that valued the startup at $3.5 billion, double from a year earlier.

• Payments story #2: Rocket ties up with Philippines telco for payments solution in SE Asia: Ecommerce giant Rocket Internet and Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) today took a big step towards their goal of becoming a strong contender in online payments in the region. In a joint statement, the companies announced they’ve inked an agreement to form a 50-50 joint venture for online and mobile payment solutions, with a focus on emerging markets. This follows PLDT’s US$445 million investment in the Germany-based startup incubator. The joint venture particularly targets Rocket Internet’s ecommerce operations under brands such as Zalora and Lazada in Southeast Asia. Prior to this deal, the companies had begun making use of PLDT’s MePay. MePay is a payment service for shopping on Zalora’s site without a credit card.

• Big news in the US TV Market: Dish to launch Sling TV, a web TV service: What is Sling TV? Sling TV is a service by Dish Network, one of the country's largest satellite TV providers. When it officially goes online in a few weeks, it will cost $20 a month. For that you'll get access to about 30 channels — including TNT, Cartoon Network and CNN. These channels will be streamable over the Internet — or "over the top," in industry parlance. But the real kicker is that Dish is throwing in ESPN (more on that in a second). Why is Dish launching something like this? Dish wants to go after cord-cutters — a growing segment of TV watchers who don't subscribe to pay-TV and instead watch only free, over-the-air television, on-demand services like Netflix, or a mix of both. The drawback to being a cord-cutter is that you sometimes sacrifice channel choices. You don't get to watch HBO, for example, if you're a cord-cutter. But many people, particularly young viewers, don't seem to mind — and that's a problem for traditional pay-TV companies. What's the big deal about ESPN? Live sports is pretty much the foundation for all paid television.