Facebook Q4 Earnings Preview: How Important is Instagram to Bottom Line?
As Facebook prepares to share its Q4 earnings on Wednesday, it feels as though 2018 never happened. That was the year the Cambridge Analytica data leak came to light, when 87 million users had their profile information unknowingly accessed by the political data firm. Facebook executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, made countless mia culpas in the aftermath, promising to take user privacy more seriously. But the damage was only exacerbated by a string of embarrassing data breaches as the year came to a close. Facebook’s stock price took a major hit, dropping 25% on the year, closing 2019 at about $133 per share. At the time, the social network looked both vulnerable and outdated to legions of potential users, especially Millennials and Gen Z’ers. That didn’t turn out to be the case. Also Read: A New Era for Video Game Streaming? Competitors Target Twitch Instead, Facebook rebounded in a big way last year, with its share price climbing more than 50% in 2019. Rather than abandon the platform, users stuck around — and more joined the fold, with Facebook entering the fourth quarter with 1.62 billion daily active users. Facebook’s users, it appeared, didn’t seem to care that much about...
Read original story Facebook Q4 Earnings Preview: How Important is Instagram to Bottom Line? At TheWrap
