Facebook Reaches Record Sales While Setting Aside $3 Billion For Privacy Fines
Facebook recently posted its first quarter earnings for 2019.
The report shows that monthly and daily active users increased and that there was a 26 percent increase in year-over-year sales. Facebook’s reported sales were actually $15.1 billion ahead of Wall Street projections.
The continued success might come as a surprise to some, considering the recent scandals and lawsuits that Facebook has been embroiled in.
For example, Facebook is expecting a potential record-setting Federal Trade Commission fine mostly related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal of March last year.
The case centers around Facebook allowing London-based data mining and analytics firm Cambridge Analytica to harvest information from as many as 50 million Facebook users.
Since then, Facebook has also admitted to its app developers leaking millions of user records on cloud servers.
Yet, despite the controversy, the company has done exceedingly well.
Facebook has noted that it is setting aside roughly $3 billion — six percent of its cash and marketable securities on hand — for the Federal Trade Commission fine that will be hitting them, probably later on this year.
They’ve said they “estimate the range of loss in this matter is $3 billion to $5 billion,” but that no solid numbers were yet known.
Facebook doesn’t seem overly concerned by the fine, however, as user numbers grow.
The number of people who check Facebook on a daily basis has increased by eight percent from this time a year ago, to 1.56 billion.
And, the people who check Facebook monthly has increased to eight percent as well, to 2.38 billion.
As Facebook notes, “Around 2.7 billion people use Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, or Messenger each month. On average, more than 2.1 billion people use one of our services every day.”
