Can Facebook Keep Up the Pace With Q3 Earnings?
October 30, 2019 by Chris LangeFacebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) is scheduled to release its third-quarter financial results after the markets close on Wednesday. The consensus estimates are calling for $1.91 in earnings per share (EPS) and $17.37 billion in revenue. The same period of last year reportedly had $1.76 in EPS and $13.73 billion in revenue.
In the second quarter, mobile advertising revenue represented roughly 94% of advertising revenue, up from about 91% of advertising revenue in the same period of last year.
Additionally, management estimated that more than 2.1 billion people use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger every day on average, and around 2.7 billion people use at least one of this family of services each month.
More recently, Facebook has been coming to terms with some difficulties in regard to its digital currency effort, Libra. Some are worried that it could be over before it even begins. The larger issues around the Libra Association is that it has lost key members of the group. PayPal already announced that it would no longer participate in the group, and companies such as MasterCard, Visa and eBay reportedly have ditched the effort.
Excluding Monday’s move, Facebook had outperformed the broad markets, with its stock up about 44% year to date. In the past 52 weeks, the stock was up closer to 30%.
A few analysts weighed in on Facebook ahead of the results:
- Credit Suisse has a Buy rating and a $260 price target.
- Stifel’s Hold rating comes with a $205 target price.
- Goldman Sachs has a Buy rating with a $231 price target.
- Rosenblatt Securities rates it at Buy with a $242 price target.
- Barclays has a Buy rating with a $240 target price.
- Deutsche Bank has a Buy rating and a $230 price target.
Shares of Facebook traded down 0.5% at $201.29 on Wednesday, in a 52-week range of $123.02 to $218.62. The consensus price target is $223.19.
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