Facebook has just announced its earnings for the second quarter of 2018, which is a bit of a mixed bag. It beat analyst expectations on Earnings Per Share, coming in at $1.74 versus the expectation of $1.72. However, it did miss on revenue and Global Daily Active Users. For revenue, it brought in $13.23 billion versus the $13.36 billion analysts expected. And Global Daily Active Users were 1.47 billion versus the 1.49 billion expected. This is likely due to the big Cambridge Analytica scandal that plagued Facebook during the quarter.
For the quarter, its advertising came in at $13 billion, while “payments and other fees” were around $193 million. Total costs and expenses were $7.3 billion, which is about 50-percent higher than the same period a year ago. Operating margin did also fall a bit compared to the same period last year, coming in at 44-percent. As mentioned already, EPS was $1.74 for the quarter, which is the highest number Facebook has ever had, and a big jump from the $1.32 EPS from the same period a year ago. Other numbers here include monthly active users, which were 2.23 billion and that’s an increase of 11-percent year-over-year. Mobile advertising revenue represented about 91-percent of the company’s advertising revenue in the quarter. Capital Expenditures were $3.46 billion, and the cash and cash equivalents were $42.31 billion. Finally the headcount for Facebook ending on June 30, was 30,275. That is up an astounding 47-percent year-over-year.
While Facebook did miss on the revenue portion of its earnings report, the item that is being looked at the most is the Daily Active Users or DAU. This indicates how many people were using the platform each month. Now while the 1.47 billion number is up 11-percent year-over-year, it is still a bit lower than the street had expected. And that could be due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal that prompted the #DeleteFacebook hashtag during the quarter.