Facebook Shares Shoot Up After Strong Q4 Earnings Despite Scandals (techcrunch.com) 31
Despite Facebook's recent scandals, such as the site's biggest data breach, the social media company managed to beat Wall Street's estimates in its Q4 earnings. "Facebook hit 2.32 billion monthly users, up 2.2 percent from 2.27 billion last quarter, speeding up its growth rate," reports TechCrunch. "Facebook climbed to 1.52 billion daily active users from 1.49 billion last quarter for a 2 percent growth rate that dwarfed last quarter's 1.36 percent." From the report: Facebook earned $16.91 billion off all those users with a $2.38 GAAP earnings per share. Those numbers handily beat Wall Street's expectations of $16.39 billion in revenue and $2.18 GAAP earnings per share, plus 2.32 billion monthly and 1.51 billion daily active users. Facebook's daily to monthly user ratio, or stickiness, held firm at 66 percent where it's stayed for years, showing those still on Facebook aren't using it much less. Facebook shares had closed today at $150.42 but shot up over 9 percent following the record revenue and profit announcements to hover around $162. A big 30 percent year-over-year boost in average revenue per user in North America fueled those gains. Yet that's still way down from $186 where it was a year ago and a peak of $217 in July.
Facebook's monthly active user plateaued in North America but roared up in Europe. That was shored up by a reversal of last quarter's decline in Rest Of World average revenue per user, which fell 4.7% in Q3 but bounced back with 16.5 percent growth in Q4. Facebook raked in $6.8 billion in profit this quarter as it slowed down hiring and only grew headcount 5 percent from 33,606 to 35,587. It seems Facebook has gotten to a comfortable place with its security staff-up in the wake of election interference, fake news, and content moderation troubles. Its revenue is up 30 percent year-over-year while profits grew 61 percent, which is pretty remarkable for a 15-year old technology company.
Facebook's monthly active user plateaued in North America but roared up in Europe. That was shored up by a reversal of last quarter's decline in Rest Of World average revenue per user, which fell 4.7% in Q3 but bounced back with 16.5 percent growth in Q4. Facebook raked in $6.8 billion in profit this quarter as it slowed down hiring and only grew headcount 5 percent from 33,606 to 35,587. It seems Facebook has gotten to a comfortable place with its security staff-up in the wake of election interference, fake news, and content moderation troubles. Its revenue is up 30 percent year-over-year while profits grew 61 percent, which is pretty remarkable for a 15-year old technology company.
Hand up (Score:5, Informative)
Not a technology company. An advertising company.
If I can't go to the shops and buy a Facebook, they're not a technology company.
Re: (Score:2)
They do what they want cause their product is free... You are their product!
Yarr har fiddle dee dee
Being a product is alright to be
They do what they want cause their product is free...
You are their product!
Re:Hand up (Score:4, Insightful)
quick (Score:1, Insightful)
cue the basement dweller with the following -
1) fuck facebook
2) no one should use it
3) they should be accountable to what infomation ppl volunteer for free on a free service
oh wait - they don't mention point 3......
because - data leaks aside - users are volunteering their information for free on a free service...
plaster that shit on search engines.... thats not FB's fault ppl are idiots.
Re: quick (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, it's not the stuff that folk post in FB that bothers me, it's the highly detailed tracking that FB is employing of everyone, FB users and everyone else, that concerns me.
Then what totally freaks me out is the company's continued attempts to obtain even more data than the user volunteered - like when they deliberately employed a workaround to get users contacts list on Android, despite the user denying them that privilege.
And that now we find out they deliberately and methodically misused their Apple Enterprise Developer License to totally bypass Apples walled garden to get kids and adults alike to install a VPN app which was then used to steal even more data.
And let's not forget that they're still fighting the lawsuit about the friendly chargebacks when they targeted kids and all but told them to grab their parents credit cards then start to place a shit ton of in-game charges on them.
But yeah, let's just blame the users because Facebook are just a bunch of saints, right?
Re: quick (Score:1)
Mark Z - is that you?
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Facebook's product is the private data of anyone that uses Facebook. They just tricked a lot of folks into installing spyware in the form of a VPN app. So now they have even more data that they wouldn't have otherwise gotten from these users' regular use of Facebook.
So why would it be a surprise that their stock just went up?
Re: (Score:2)
Apple stock rose yesterday too. Also their earnings were less then what was expected, they were better then what the investor feared. So the stock went up.
Oddly enough this is how I am rating world affairs, things are worse today then I expected them to be years ago, however it is better then my worse fears on what could go wrong. But for some reason I am not happy about it.
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Facebook is an advertising company. There is a ton of add revenue for all the Facebook people to post that they are quitting Facebook.
I don't think a lot of people really knows what it means to boycott something.
Boycotting something actually puts you in a disadvantage to prove your point.
I have heard people say they are boycotting whatever, 80% are boycotting something they wouldn't get anyways. "I will boycott Roles Royce, because ummm they are the car of the wealthy who do not pay their taxes". then 10%
But I mean, how do we know? (Score:2)
Am I the only one, only programmer, who thinks, jeez, just you know, "update hits set hits = hits * 1.0012;"?
How do we know those numbers are legit? Certainly, assessing facebook traffic numbers/members is as difficult to do as determining unemployment numbers. Is it so hard to believe that facebook would over-inflate it's numbers to compensate for the bad press and leaving members? As far as I know, there is no mechanism to verify the numbers they put out. And there seems to be a TON of money to be made ba
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Reporting false information to the SEC is really a bad idea. And such fraud if not found out immediately will be reflected in the future.
For example what was common back in the 1990's was a company who as near at finishing a sale that was near certain, Would put the product on the truck and count it as a sale for the day before they have to report their revenue. This was all fine and good, until the tech bubble popped, and a lot of these sales didn't go threw. So they needed to record an inflated loss th
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Facebook's numbers have always been a made up fantasy. What do you expect in a world where nobody cares what the facts are?
Despite scandals? (Score:4, Interesting)
BECAUSE of them.
And making it public knowledge that they have a load of private information and sell it is not scandals, at least not with those that matter, it's called "advertising to your actual customer".