After releasing earnings earlier this evening, Facebook is trading down approximately 8%. Let's take a closer look as to why that might be happening. Average revenue per user was up roughly 26% year over year which is strong yet a bit slower than last quarter at 33%:
The largest driver of average revenue per user, the US & Canada also remains strong with year over year growth of 49% but that is a slight deceleration from last quarter's 54%:
Whilst revenue per users did see lower growth rates than the previous quarter, overall users grew close to 16% compared to 14% on average the last several quarters. Although this may seem like marginal user growth and with increased capital spending on the horizon, there is no denying the size, scale and impact of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp on the advertising world. I see nothing to be worried about after Q3's numbers and would be a buyer on weakness.
Previous coverage here.
Disclosure: I am not a Facebook shareholder on the date of this post.