![]() ![]() Monthly users of Facebook's core social network climbed 8% to 2.5 billion, while 2.9 billion people used one of its apps - Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram or Messenger - each month. The company continued to add users, beating estimates. so the room for error was low," said Daniel Morgan, a portfolio manager at Synovus Trust Co. "FB stock had made a big run-up in anticipation of the report. Still, Facebook's shares rose more than 50% over the last year, raising pressure for a strong performance. But it is the company's fourth straight quarter of revenue growth less than 30%, playing to concerns that Facebook is struggling to restore its pre-2018 momentum when sales regularly grew upwards of 40%. The fourth-quarter revenue growth of 25% did beat analysts' expectations of a dip to 23%. It also announced it had reached a $550 million settlement in principle of an Illinois lawsuit that claimed it illegally collected and stored biometric data for millions of users without their consent. That investment began declining last year, leading analysts to believe Facebook was largely finished building out its new systems and beginning to find efficiencies that could whittle costs further.īut the company reported total costs and expenses increased 34% to $12.22 billion in the fourth quarter, more than double the 14% that analysts had forecast and dragging down operating margins to 42% from 46% a year earlier. The company addressed those issues starting in mid-2018 following repeated scandals, causing growth in expenses to surge by more than 100% for several quarters as it hired privacy staff and invested in content moderation. ![]() It is also facing heat over how its services have been manipulated to spread misinformation. He specifically noted changes made by Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google, which have both announced new restrictions on browser cookies used to track users online.įacebook, the world's second-biggest seller of online ads, has been under fierce scrutiny worldwide in recent years over its privacy practices. The majority of the impact lies in front of us," Wehner said. The bigger problem is explaining how living standards are continuing to fall with no sign of the wages price index getting ahead of inflation, never mind the real, after-tax story."We have experienced some modest impact from these headwinds to date. Politically, lying about debt and deficit and interest rates for nine years will make it hard for the Coalition to suddenly have credibility in telling the truth that rising rates are a sign of a strong economy, that falling and extremely low rates are not necessarily healthy. The irony is that tightening monetary policy actually can’t result in much spending being reduced.Īs the Australian Bureau of Statistics explained, most of the inflation we’re feeling is in non-discretionary spending – we still have to pay the rent, buy food and fuel, meet necessary health costs, even people with big mortgages. Remember that only about a third of households have a mortgage and most of those have either built up a buffer or substantially paid it down.īut the psychological impact of the first rate rise in a dozen years is broader than the number of people who will feel it in their wallets.Īll the headlines get noticed, the idea of people cutting back on spending spreads around. The financial impact of this and the next couple of rate rises will be felt by few Australians – only those who took on large mortgages in the past couple of years. Money remains cheap enough to be stimulating the economy, not slowing it. ![]() Anyway, Dr Lowe said only “some withdrawal of the extraordinary monetary support” was appropriate. The other factors in the monetary equation could no longer be ignored. I’ll take bets now that wages growth will still be a long way short of the inflation rate, meaning living standards will continue to fall. The bank’s business liaison tells of wages growth picking up. The forecast is still for this inflationary surge to be transitory, for both the headline and underlying figures to be ”around 3 per cent” by the middle of 2024.ĭr Lowe had nailed the bank’s colours to decent wages growth before lifting rates but, you know, stuff happens. ![]() The bank acknowledges headline inflation will continue to rise from the latest consumer price index reading of 5.1 per cent to 6 per cent for the year with underlying inflation of 4.75 per cent. Growth of only 2 per cent doesn’t reduce unemployment. The unemployment rate is predicted to fall to about 3.5 per cent nearly next year, but then stay there. (The RBA’s 2022 forecast is half a percentage point lower than Treasury’s budget prediction of 4.75 per cent, but matches the budget’s soft 2023 expectations.) ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |