Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg testifies before the House Financial Services Committee in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill October 23, 2019 in Washington, DC. Zuckerberg testified about Facebook’s proposed cryptocurrency Libra, how his company will handle false and misleading information by political leaders during the 2020 campaign and how it handles its users’ data and privacy.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Facebook is set to report its third-quarter earnings on Thursday.
Here’s what analysts are expecting:
- Earnings: $1.91 per share forecast by Refinitv
- Revenue: $19.8 billion forecast by Refinitiv
- Daily active users (DAUs): 1.79 billion forecast by FactSet
- Monthly active users (MAUs): 2.7 billion forecast by FactSet
- Average revenue per user (ARPU): $7.32 forecast by FactSet
Facebook endured a broad advertiser boycott during the third quarter, with more than 1,000 brands deciding to pull ads from the social network during July in protest of the company’s policies on hate speech and misinformation.
It’s unclear how damaging this boycott was, but at the very least, the boycott created an opportunity for Facebook’s rivals. Last week, Snap reported that the third quarter created an opportunity for it “to engage with advertisers and agencies in real time to ensure that our existing partners as well as new prospects understood our offering in relation to our values.”
Election ads were particularly key for Facebook throughout the third quarter with the U.S. going into the final months of the 2020 general election. A CNBC analysis found that political advertisers in the U.S. spent at least $264 million on Facebook in the third quarter, which comes to about 3% of Facebook’s estimated total U.S. revenue in the third quarter.
