Facebook beats Q1 2019 profit estimates, sets aside $3 billion for privacy penalty
On Wednesday, Facebook Inc blew past Wall Street profit estimates in the first quarter and set aside $3 billion to cover a settlement with the US regulators calming investors who had worried about the outcome of a months-long federal probe, reports Reuters.
In after-hours trade, shares of Facebook jumped more than 10 percent to $200.50 . A large part of the ground lost last year was regained by Facebook. They had set the settlement accrual at $3 billion but said could rise as high as $5 billion. This had cut the company’s net income in the first quarter to $2.43 billion, or 85 cents per share.
According to IBES data from Refinitiv, if the charges are excluded, Facebook would have earned $1.89 a share, up from $1.69 in the year-ago quarter and easily beating analysts’ average estimate of $1.63 per share.
The senior analyst at financial markets platform Investing.com, Haris Anwar said, “This is a strong report suggesting that advertisers still see value in Facebook’s platform, as they did before the controversies and scandals erupted”.
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