“Will Facebook, the portal worth nearly half a trillion dollars, feel the consequences of the private data leakage from its accounts? In the last year, both the number of users and the profit per each of them have grown”, writes Bartosz Grejner, Conotoxia analyst.
According to the latest financial report, at the end of 2017 Facebook had 2,129 billion active users who logged in at least once a month. It would seem that the portal popularity has reached zenith a few years ago, but there is nothing more misleading.
Is an American three times more expensive than a European?
At the beginning of last year, there were about 200 million less active facebokers, and two years earlier just over half a billion less.
Not only the number of users has been growing. Facebook can "squeeze" more of each of them. Its income, which in 98% comes from advertisements, converted into each user amounted to 6.18 USD, or 21.1 PLN approx. This result concerns the last quarter of the previous year and it was 28% higher than a year earlier.
Facebook earns more money on Americans and Canadians than on Europeans. In the fourth quarter, revenue per user was 26.76 USD in North America (91.51 PLN) and it was three times higher than for one inhabitant of the Old Continent. Throughout the year, Facebook squeezed an average of 84.4 USD (288.6 PLN) from every Facebook user in the US and Canada, while from a European citizen 27.41 USD, or 93.74 PLN.
16 billion dollars profit
When juxtaposing these numbers with the aforementioned average, you can see that both continents overstate it. Although most Facebook users live in Asia-Pacific region, South America and Africa, they generate the least revenue for the company: 71% of users generated less than 26% income in the fourth quarter. Not surprisingly, the portal’s revenue per user was much smaller there - in the Asia-Pacific region it was 2.54 USD (8.69 PLN), and in the rest of the world 1.86 USD (6.36 PLN). Facebook has not been able to achieve such high increases there as in Europe or North America.
For the whole 2017, one user generated an average of 20.2 USD, or 68.5 PLN for Facebook - according to Cinkciarz.pl exchange rates (from April 9th, 2018). That's the income. However, how much does the service gain on the user? The company reached 15.9 billion USD of pure profit last year, which gives approx. 7.95 USD (PLN 27.19) per one user, after considering all costs and tax.
That's what we're worth for the largest social networking portal in the world. Our value has been growing from year to year, it is not surprising that despite current problems, Facebook will do everything to keep as many users as possible, continuing the growth trend of both their total number and a profit that it is able to generate from each one of them.
Awkward beginning of the year
After revealing a gigantic leak of personal data from Facebook accounts in March this year, large companies and well-known people have declared that they will delete their Facebook accounts. Elon Musk and his brands: SpaceX, Tesla and Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp decided on such move. The #deletefacebook action has gained popularity on Twitter. Conotoxia Holding Group has joined it, including Cinkciarz.pl - online financial service protal well known in Poland.
Facebook shares have dropped by 14%, or by about 50 billion dollars. Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, after the outbreak of the scandal assured that he made a move to prevent similar situations. He bought full page advertisements in the largest American newspapers, where he apologized to users for undermined trust.