After a literal butchery that Facebook went through in its last quarter’s earnings, the company has come up with its Q3’18 numbers. And while the numbers do not really stack up right where estimates wanted them to be, Facebook’s shares still saw an upward rise of upto 3% post the company’s earnings report.
Facebook’s user growth rate continued to shrink, with the company reaching 2.27 billion monthly users, up 37 million users or 1.79 percent — only slightly better than Q1’s slowest-ever growth rate of just 1.54 percent. Wall Stree had estimated that number to stand up to $2.29 Billion.
In terms of revenue numbers, the company’s revenue stood at $13.73 Billion, compared to Refinitiv’s consensus estimate of $13.78 billion. However, in terms of per share earnings, Facebook saw an $1.76 EPS compared to an estimate of $1.47, making for a mixed report. Revenue growth though stood at just 33% Y-o-Y, a sharp dip from the 49% it had a year ago, and the 59 percent it had in Q3 2016.
The company has put the onus of below-par numbers largely on the current foreign exchange scenario.
What is really hurting Facebook though, are the stark differences in its earnings when it comes to regions across the globe. The company clocked $27.61 per users in the US and Canada, and $8.82 in Europe, but just $2.67 in Asia-Pacific and $1.82 in the Rest Of World region. That pretty much headlines the fact, that Facebook’s ambitions of raking in revenues from rest of the world while its core US-Canada markets saturate, are clearly not working.
What this quarter did not highlight though, is the ever-increasing numbers of scandals and fake news stories that have been propping up lately. We will see the results of those in next quarter earnings.
