Enlarge image
Facebook logo (icon image)
Photo:
Thibault Camus / AP
New York's Wall Street stock exchanges hit new highs on Monday.
The main reasons for this were, on the one hand, the success reports from the car manufacturer Tesla and, on the other hand, the anticipation of the quarterly figures from the social network Facebook.
Tesla is worth more than a trillion dollars for the first time after announcing a major deal with Hertz.
In the end, the news from Facebook was not that positive, although the company presented a good result after the market closed.
Group sales rose 35 percent to $ 29 billion. However, Facebook remained below the expectations of the analysts, who had reckoned on average with a good 29.5 billion dollars. For the fourth quarter, the company expects sales between $ 31.5 billion and $ 34 billion. That would also be below the forecasts of the analysts, who expect earnings of a good 34.8 billion dollars.
As an explanation for the numbers, Facebook refers to the changed data protection guidelines from Apple, which make it difficult for the group to display personalized advertising on iPhones. The advertising business makes up by far the largest part of the group's revenue. Due to the adjustments made by Apple and possible consequences, the digital advertising market is associated with a "significant uncertainty," said the company. In order not to jeopardize further growth, Facebook announced that it would invest billions in other business areas such as hardware as well as virtual and augmented reality.
Shortly before the quarterly figures were published, Facebook faced renewed criticism for putting profit above user safety.
Whistleblower Frances Haugen had, among other things, supplied the Wall Street Journal with explosive documents that provide insights into internal company matters.
Facebook said Haugen was misrepresenting the company's work.
A name change of the group, which has been speculated about since last week, was not announced.
This could happen on Thursday as part of the in-house developer conference Connect.
mmm / dpa / Reuters