In a few hours, $ 125 billion of capitalization have evaporated – the equivalent of the market value of IBM or four times that of Twitter. With Facebook, the numbers are often staggering. The social network of Mark Zuckerberg has been severely punished by investors for having a state, Wednesday, 25 July, signs of a slowdown in the growth in the number of its users and its revenues. The penalty is up to the expectations, in the stratosphere.
A lot of people had expected that Facebook will continue to grow back, despite the controversy over the personal data, or the fake news (false information) in the image of Google. The firm of Mountain View (California) was published on the eve of the impressive results : $ 8.3 billion of net income to 32.2 billion of revenue in the second quarter, compared to “only” $ 3.5 billion and $ 26 billion a year earlier. Such a surplus has enabled him to swallow in two months the fine history of $ 5 billion that comes from inflicting the european Commission for anti-competitive practices.
Figures published by Facebook for the second quarter were always something to rival the almost all of the companies of the planet : a turnover increase of 42 %, to $ 13 billion, and a net income growth of 31 %, to $ 5.1 billion. Or a gross margin of 44 %.
Even the Stock price remains at 173 dollars, close to what it was in early march, before the revelation of the scandal of undue exploitation of data by the service provider british Cambridge Analytica. The title has lost 20 % in one evening, but it had reached its historic record, a few hours earlier, to 217,5 dollars.
A slowdown in revenue is in the offing
However, investors have reasons for concern. Some are related to the allegations made on Facebook…
