[HN Gopher] Facebook Reports Third Quarter 2020 Results [pdf]
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       Facebook Reports Third Quarter 2020 Results [pdf]
        
       Author : ve55
       Score  : 21 points
       Date   : 2020-10-29 20:35 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (s21.q4cdn.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (s21.q4cdn.com)
        
       | t_serpico wrote:
       | Average revenue per user is about 3-4 times higher in the US than
       | in Europe (slide 4). Any ideas why? Do we just have a proclivity
       | to spend more or are we more influenced by advertising?
        
         | remolacha wrote:
         | Also, Americans are wealthier on average. But I do wonder if
         | Europe's data regulations make it harder for Facebook to target
         | ads as effectively in the EU...
        
         | Barrin92 wrote:
         | Americans are somewhat wealthier than the average European but
         | not by that margin. My guess is several things. European data
         | protection is stricter so monetizing users is probably harder,
         | but more importantly I'd say there is no unified market for
         | advertisers. Europe has dozens of languages and different
         | cultures that are much harder to serve with ads than you can in
         | the United States.
        
       | ve55 wrote:
       | The slides provided are also very quick to read, providing visual
       | graphs of growth in many areas by catagory:
       | https://s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/files/doc_financials/2020/q3...
       | 
       | 3.21 billion monthly active users across their products, insane!
        
         | ceejayoz wrote:
         | Given how many spambots I come across on popular pages' comment
         | sections, and folks with a separate work account, I'm fairly
         | skeptical on those numbers.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | beckingz wrote:
         | This includes any person who visits a website that has a
         | facebook tracking pixel.
        
       | _RPL5_ wrote:
       | The first table in the report says that FB's effective tax rate
       | in 2020 was 4%. The same chart says that in 2019 their effective
       | tax rate was 17%.
       | 
       | Can someone with insight explain this discrepancy? Is this some
       | accounting artifact, did FB get a COVID tax break, or is it
       | something else?
        
         | orange_joe wrote:
         | in their charts it explains this as follows:
         | 
         | Reflects a one-time income tax benefit of $913 million related
         | to the effects of a tax election to capitalize and amortize
         | certain research and development expenses for U.S. income tax
         | purposes. Excluding this tax benefit, our effective tax rate
         | would have been 11 percentage points higher in Q3 2020.
        
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       (page generated 2020-10-29 23:00 UTC)