Facebook Stock Plunges by 7% as Q4 Earnings Show Slowing Growth

Facebook recently released its fourth-quarter earnings with interesting figures. The general report shows that on the plus side, the social media giant is doing better than expected. Facebook surpassed the majority of Wall Street estimates for the company. On the other hand, the report shows that the level of growth needs work and seems to be slowing down considerably.

Facebook Fourth Quarter Highlights

Facebook’s figures show that the company now sees 2.5 active monthly users. This is a 2% increase from the 2.45 billion it pulled in for the third quarter of 2019, which in itself was a 1.65% increase from Q2. Breaking that down to active daily users puts the number at 1.66 billion, a 2.4% growth also from the third quarter of 2019. That also adds up to a 2% growth from the previous quarter which saw 1.52 billion active daily users.

Total revenue for the quarter saw a significant jump as well. Facebook pulled in $21.08 billion, representing 25% year-over-year (YOY) increase. Q4 earnings per share stand at $2.56.

Fourth Quarter Shows Slow Facebook Growth

Regardless of all the increase, the above figures from the fourth quarter shows that Facebook is struggling with growth. Facebook has had a pretty controversial year with events that might be responsible for the growth decline.

The company reported $7.3 billion in net income, which is still a YOY growth of 7%. However, that’s not much to celebrate because, in 2018, Facebook’s YOY growth was an impressive 61%.

Over the last year, Facebook’s staff strength has also increased significantly. At the moment, probably because of all its legal issues, its privacy-focused engineering team is over 1000. This increase pushed the company’s Q4 expenses up 34% from Q4 2018 to $12.2 billion. For 2019 as a whole, expenses increased by a whopping 51%.

In response to the fourth-quarter figures showing some stagnation, Facebook stock (FB) shed 7% of its weight.

Facebook Still Has Problems

Facebook is not the most liked company, especially among authorities in different countries. The company is almost always in the middle of some legal battle or the other. At the moment, Facebook is facing several investigations from both state and federal quarters in the U.S., for privacy and antitrust issues.

To quiet certain allegations that it violated Illinois state law, the company will pay $550 million as settlement.

Also, Coinspeaker reported that Facebook is facing a lawsuit which suggests the company made several illegal moves to snuff out competition. The plaintiffs, essentially rival companies, are asking the court to force a split of the company. This is expected to end what they call an “unrivaled global dominance of the Social Data and Social Advertising Markets.”

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has said the company will be a bit more strict this year. 

“My goal for this next decade isn’t to be liked but to be understood because in order to be trusted people need to know what you stand for,” said he.