The company reported earnings per share reaching $ 1.99 whereas the initial forecasts were for EPS of just $1.90. Moreover, Facebook’s revenue in the second quarter of 2019 has grown to $16.9 billion from the early expectations of $16.5 billion. And while the number of Facebook's monthly active users did not exceed the 2.41 billion from the early forecasts, the company reported better-than-expected average revenue per user at $7.05, which exceeds the initial expectations of $6.87. [source]
Despite these very encouraging findings of the report, the share price of the company still tumbled down during Thursday’s trading session, as the company announced that a $ 5 billion settlement had been struck with Federal Trade Commission a day earlier following the major Cambridge Analytica scandal which the company was thrown at in 2018, after the sensitive personal data of more than 87 million Facebook users was accessed without their consent.
“We had a strong quarter and our business and community continue to grow. We are investing in building stronger privacy protections for everyone and on delivering new experiences for the people who use our services.” [source]
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, made these comments after the release of the earnings report, in an attempt to shed off the controversy which still surrounds the company in relation to its maltreatment of sensitive data in the past.
Overall, the major resistance level at 203.00 that affects the share price of Facebook Inc, and was first outlined in the weekly expectations article from earlier this week, held the intensified volatility following the release of the earnings report. The false breakout above the resistance level was shortly followed by a noticeable collapse in the share price to 200.71, which is also the closing price of Thursday’s trading session.