The social media giant, which faced huge publicity and PR fallout from data harvested by a third-party company Cambridge Analytica, appears to have been little fazed by the setback. It reported strong growth not only in revenue and income, but in user and usage numbers as well. In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in a Senate hearing almost three weeks ago that the company had seen no dramatic fall-out of usage numbers after the negative press.
Facebook reported it’s Q1 2018 earnings of $11.97 billion, up from $8.03 billion a year earlier. It reported net income of $4.99 billion and $1.69 EPS, up from $3.06 billion net income and $1.04 EPS at the same time last year.
The company’s prepared earnings statement noted that daily and monthly active users both grew 13 percent year over year to 1.45 billion and 2.2 billion users respectively, and that mobile advertising revenue accounted for 91 percent of advertising revenue. From it’s earnings slidedeck, it appears that Facebook has grown revenue consistently across all the geographies (United States and Canada, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of World) that it breaks out usage numbers on.
Zuckerberg promised at the Senate hearing that his company would hire 10,000 new employees to deal with security and content moderation in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. It remains to be seen whether the expanded hiring will impact Facebook’s profit margins, which currently are at roughly 46 percent.
