By the magic of pure accounting gimmickry, one-off tom-foolery, non-GAAP shenanigans, and the sterling work of its now-retiring CFO; Facebook has 'managed' to produce twice as much non-GAAP net income as GAAP net income in the last 2 years...
Straight from the social horse's mouth, here is Facebook's Net Income on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis...
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Which means, summed across the last 2 years, non-GAAP magic has created 100% more 'pretend' Net Income than real Net Income...
[4]
We are sure we do not need to tell you which one of these is used to "value" the company as "cheap"!
And yet is amazing how 'stable' Facebook has managed to keep its non-GAAP operating margins when the real GAAP margins have been so volatile...
But - as we told numerous times on mainstream media channels - you are not buying Facebook on valuations... you are buying growth (or the fact that there is another greater fool with no actual accounting skills willing to buy the stock $0.00001 higher than you are)...