Facebook Reports First Quarter 2019 Results

MENLO PARK, Calif., April 24, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Facebook, Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) today reported financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2019.

"We had a good quarter and our business and community continue to grow," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "We are focused on building out our privacy-focused vision for the future of social networking, and working collaboratively to address important issues around the internet."

First Quarter 2019 Financial Highlights

First Quarter 2019 Operational and Other Financial Highlights

• Daily active users (DAUs) – DAUs were 1.56 billion on average for March 2019, an increase of 8% year-over-year.
• Monthly active users (MAUs) – MAUs were 2.38 billion as of March 31, 2019, an increase of 8% year-over-year.
• Mobile advertising revenue – Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 93% of advertising revenue for the first quarter of 2019, up from approximately 91% of advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2018.
• Capital expenditures – Capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, were $3.96 billion for the first quarter of 2019.
• Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities – Cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities were $45.24 billion at the end of the first quarter of 2019.
• Headcount – Headcount was 37,773 as of March 31, 2019, an increase of 36% year-over-year.

In addition, we estimate that more than 2.1 billion people now use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger (our "Family" of services) every day on average, and around 2.7 billion people use at least one of our Family of services each month.

In the first quarter of 2019, we reasonably estimated a probable loss and recorded an accrual of $3.0 billion in connection with the inquiry of the FTC into our platform and user data practices, which accrual is included in accrued expenses and other current liabilities on our condensed consolidated balance sheet. We estimate that the range of loss in this matter is $3.0 billion to $5.0 billion. The matter remains unresolved, and there can be no assurance as to the timing or the terms of any final outcome.

Webcast and Conference Call Information

Facebook will host a conference call to discuss the results at 2 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. ET today. The live webcast of Facebook's earnings conference call can be accessed at investor.fb.com, along with the earnings press release, financial tables, and slide presentation. Facebook uses the investor.fb.com and newsroom.fb.com websites as well as Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/zuck) as means of disclosing material non-public information and for complying with its disclosure obligations under Regulation FD.

Following the call, a replay will be available at the same website. A telephonic replay will be available for one week following the conference call at +1 (404) 537-3406 or +1 (855) 859-2056, conference ID 9195605.

Transcripts of conference calls with publishing equity research analysts held today will also be posted to the investor.fb.com website.

About Facebook

Founded in 2004, Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what's going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.

Contacts

Investors:
Deborah Crawford
[email protected] / investor.fb.com

Press:
Vanessa Chan
[email protected] / newsroom.fb.com

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding our future business expectations, which are subject to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are only predictions and may differ materially from actual results due to a variety of factors including: our ability to retain or increase users and engagement levels; our reliance on advertising revenue; our dependency on mobile operating systems, networks, and standards that we do not control; risks associated with new products and changes to existing products as well as other new business initiatives; our emphasis on user growth and engagement and the user experience over short-term financial results; maintaining and enhancing our brand and reputation; our ongoing safety, security, and content review efforts; competition; risks associated with government actions that could restrict access to our products or impair our ability to sell advertising in certain countries; litigation and government inquiries; privacy and regulatory concerns; risks associated with acquisitions; security breaches; and our ability to manage growth and geographically-dispersed operations. These and other potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the results predicted are more fully detailed under the caption "Risk Factors" in our Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on January 31, 2019, which is available on our Investor Relations website at investor.fb.com and on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Additional information will also be set forth in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2019. In addition, please note that the date of this press release is April 24, 2019, and any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date. We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

To supplement our condensed consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP), we use the following non-GAAP financial measures: revenue excluding foreign exchange effect, advertising revenue excluding foreign exchange effect and free cash flow. The presentation of these financial measures is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for, or superior to, financial information prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP. Investors are cautioned that there are material limitations associated with the use of non-GAAP financial measures as an analytical tool. In addition, these measures may be different from non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies, limiting their usefulness for comparison purposes. We compensate for these limitations by providing specific information regarding the GAAP amounts excluded from these non-GAAP financial measures.

We believe these non-GAAP financial measures provide investors with useful supplemental information about the financial performance of our business, enable comparison of financial results between periods where certain items may vary independent of business performance, and allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in operating our business.

We exclude the following items from our non-GAAP financial measures:

Foreign exchange effect on revenue. We translated revenue for the three months ended March 31, 2019 using the prior year's monthly exchange rates for our settlement or billing currencies other than the U.S. dollar, which we believe is a useful metric that facilitates comparison to our historical performance.

Purchases of property and equipment, net; Principal payments on finance leases.⁽¹⁾ We subtract both net purchases of property and equipment and principal payments on finance leases in our calculation of free cash flow because we believe that these two items collectively represent the amount of property and equipment we need to procure to support our business, regardless of whether we procure such property or equipment with a finance lease. We believe that this methodology can provide useful supplemental information to help investors better understand underlying trends in our business. Free cash flow is not intended to represent our residual cash flow available for discretionary expenditures.

For more information on our non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures, please see the "Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Results" table in this press release.

⁽¹⁾ As a result of our adoption of Accounting Standards Update No. 2016-02, Leases (Topic 842) on January 1, 2019, we have conformed our definition of free cash flow to the nomenclature of the new accounting standard.

SOURCE Facebook