While announcing its quarterly financial numbers, Facebook also gave us a pretty significant insight into its user count. The company reports that the main app, along with Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, now witness more than 3 billion users in a month, up from 2.99 billion on March 31.
Facebook’s main app also witnessed a growth of 10% in monthly active users, from 2.38 billion in Q1 2019 to 2.6 billion now. Daily users are also up by 10%, since more people are logging in, and much more frequently. The company has managed to bring to its fold, multiple apps over the last decade, and now sits atop the social media throne.
The company’s operating margins also managed to grow to 33%, while last year, they were only about 22%.
Facebook has yet again, managed to beat analysts’ forecast and bring home a total of $17.74 billion in revenue and $4.9 billion in net income for Q1 2020. Comparatively, in Q1 2019, Facebook managed only about $15.1 billion in revenue and a net income of $2.43 billion. Thus, the company grew by 17% in year on year revenue.
According to analysts’ forecasts, Facebook should have witnessed $17.5 billion in revenue and report earnings per share of $1.74. However, analysts aren’t getting much accuracy points this time around, for Microsoft, Alphabet and Tesla also managed to beat analysts’ forecasts in the season of earning calls.
The company’s bread and butter, its advertising business, is showing signs of stability, after it was reported that the advertising revenue has “gone flat” in the month of April. Compared to March, when advertising revenues declined like they were tied to an anchor, this is a cause for joy. However, with many people out of a job, and companies struggling to stay afloat, it is yet to be seen if this uprise(if you can even call it that) is sustainable or not.
The advertising business managed to make up for $17.4 billion of the total revenue, and saw an year on year growth of 17% over Q1 2019’s $14.9 billion.
“After the initial steep decrease in advertising revenue in March, we have seen signs of stability reflected in the first three weeks of April, where advertising revenue has been approximately flat compared to the same period a year ago, down from the 17% year-over-year growth in the first quarter of 2020,” the company said in a statement.
However, Mark Zuckerberg also said the the economic fallout from the virus will be ‘far deadlier’ than it has been so far, and that he expects major economic challenges for the company down the road. “I worry that reopening certain places too quickly before infection rates have been reduced to very minimal levels will almost guarantee future outbreaks and worsen longer-term health and economic outcomes,” he said.
