Business

MYSPACE LOVE$ FACEBOOK VALUE

If Facebook is worth $15 billion, then MySpace is worth $65 billion.

That’s the take of RBC Capital Markets analyst David Bank, who applied the $357 Microsoft ascribed to each of Facebook’s 42 million registered users in Wednesday’s deal to its larger News Corp. rival’s 185 million registered users. (News Corp. also owns The Post.)

Bank put the eye-popping MySpace valuation in a research report yesterday as a way to illustrate that Facebook’s implied $15 billion market capitalization isn’t an accurate reflection of its actual worth.

Nor is MySpace’s $65 billion hypothetical valuation.

“Facebook’s true value isn’t $15 billion,” Bank said. “The deal with Microsoft isn’t the same as buying something for $15 billion.”

Indeed, at $15 billion, Facebook, which only has $150 million in revenue, is presumably worth more than 1,633 other publicly traded media companies worldwide, including such notable ones as Cablevision, InterActiveCorp., Discovery Communications and Liberty Global.

And at $65 billion, MySpace would be responsible for all but $3 billion of News Corp.’s entire market capitalization – which clearly isn’t the case – and would be larger than CBS and Viacom combined.

In reality, Bank said Wall Street currently assigns a roughly $5 billion valuation to MySpace. He said that there aren’t enough data points about Facebook available to determine its true value.

But Bank did point out several reasons behind Facebook’s lofty valuation. Specifically, Bank said Facebook has greater growth potential than MySpace, if only because the latter has been around longer and is therefore maturing quicker. He added that Facebook is “the darling of a darling space [social networking], which simply gives it a substantial premium.”

Bank said there is a way for News Corp. to get a valuation for MySpace on par with or in excess of the $15 billion that Facebook reeled in from Microsoft: sell a minority stake in MySpace to a partner or the public – “especially if all the hype surrounding Facebook continues,” he said.