Facebook stock falls 24 percent following report of slow user growth

[midian182]

Bottom line: For most companies, generating $13.23 billion in quarterly revenue—a 42 percent YoY increase—would be cause for celebration, but Facebook isn’t like most companies. The social network missed analysts' expectations of $13.36 billion in revenue, while Q2 2018 marked its slowest ever user growth rate. All of which saw the firm’s share price fall 24 percent in after-hours trading.

Despite so many people already being on Facebook, daily and monthly users were up 11 percent year-over-year. However, it saw monthly user growth of just 1.54 percent in Q2, down from 3.14 percent during the previous quarter, with monthly active users now at 2.23 billion. Daily active users, meanwhile, grew by just 1.44 percent, compared to 3.42 percent last quarter.

In Europe, Facebook’s number of monthly users fell for the first time, from 377 million to 376 million—thought to be a result of the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The US and Canada’s figures were unchanged at 241 million. The company did manage to squeeze more money out of each person, with the all-important Average Revenue per User (ARPU) increasing to $5.97.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook’s profitability will be affected as it looks to invest more in security and privacy. Company CFO, David Wehner, added that “Our total revenue growth rates will continue to decelerate in the second half of 2018, and we expect our revenue growth rates to decline by high single-digit percentages from prior quarters sequentially in both Q3 and Q4.”

Facebook tried to soften the blow by announcing a new metric. It said that 2.5 billion people use at least one of the company’s family of apps–Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger–each month.

Despite missing targets, it appears that scandals such as Cambridge Analytica haven’t severely affected Facebook’s ability to make money, nor has it caused a mass exodus—22 million extra people used the site each day compared to the previous quarter. But the slowdown in growth has spooked investors.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/75675-facebook-stock-falls-24-percent-following-report-slow.html

 

[Uncle Al]

I don't use it any longer although some of my friends (all over 60) seem to live on it. It amazes me since most would rather be talking on their phones than anything else. I wonder if they are talking to each other while they look at FB????

 

[NicktheWVAHick]

Has the world’s collective interest in what I had for breakfast last Tuesday suddenly subsided? Shocking.

 

[mbrowne5061]

You have a service that nearly a third of all humans in the world use, and the investors are complaining about slow user growth?

 

[ShagnWagn]

"monthly active users now at 2.23 billion"

I call shenanigans and false statements. So they think 1/3 of all humans use it monthly? So a large percentage don't even have internet let alone even power, plus a large percentage either have never created an account, or hated it and haven't used it in years. Then there are ones who quit because of facebook's constant and unbelievable privacy issues.

I am also wondering how many duplicate accounts are created to get around their own bs policing, the phishing, catfishing, and a number of other reasons. People that create another account to start over, etc etc... I would say there is less than half of what they are touting. Still impressive.

 

[wiyosaya]

You have a service that nearly a third of all humans in the world use, and the investors are complaining about slow user growth?

Such is the nature of greed and a platform that was created to exploit human behavior in the interest of greed. Fakebook is and never will be a welcome guest on any of my PCs.

Perhaps this is the beginning of the end for them since most are aware of their deceptive, even if legal, practices and there has been significant backlash on them for employing such practices. Since their business model is based on these practices. IMO, they will have to reinvent themselves if they are to survive given all the backlash. Screw everyone has never been and never will be a sound business practice, IMO.

 

[p51d007]

Fakebook, like all other FADS, got taken over by business, news, sports, ADVERTISERS who swamped it with click bait, and fake news. I don't see it on my feed, using uBlock origin, creating blocked sets, all I see is the news feed, minus all the ads, but, the "18-34" year old crowd appears to have moved onto something else.

 

[Teko03]

"monthly active users now at 2.23 billion"

I call shenanigans and false statements. So they think 1/3 of all humans use it monthly? So a large percentage don't even have internet let alone even power, plus a large percentage either have never created an account, or hated it and haven't used it in years. Then there are ones who quit because of facebook's constant and unbelievable privacy issues.

I am also wondering how many duplicate accounts are created to get around their own bs policing, the phishing, catfishing, and a number of other reasons. People that create another account to start over, etc etc... I would say there is less than half of what they are touting. Still impressive.

There are a hefty number of active fake accounts keeping those number up.

 

[JamesSWD]

Maybe FB is slowly becoming this generation's AOL.
(If you're old enough to remember AOL being king in the mid-late 90s, you know what I'm talking about)

 

[wiyosaya]

Stupidity, right? Facebook was great once. It became garbage almost overnight around the time they made their IPO..

IPO = Insearch of Profit Only