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MT 29 July 2018

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P1 BUSINESS & FINANCE maltatoday | SUNDAY • 29 JULY 2018 Business & Finance Shipping | Insurance | Freight Forwarding | Port Agency You Can Trust Thomas Smith to Deliver With over 170 years of integrity, insight, expertise and experience we make sure that our clients are always in good hands for any shipping and insurance requirement. Give us a call on +356 2205 8058 At the beginning of this week, Facebook was worth $630 billion. By the end, it was valued at $510bn, after the social media giant published its second quarter results. Company founder Mark Zuckerberg personally lost more than $15bn in one day, seeing him fall from fourth to sixth on Forbes' list of global billionaires. Although still positive, they came in below investor expectations - and company shares had plummeted nearly 20% by the end of the day on Thursday. The firm announced that its user growth rose at its slowest rate in two years. It also warned that billions in spending, planned to improve privacy and track advertisers, would outweigh revenue gains. Facebook attributed their results to a new advertising format and giving users more control over privacy. But the elephant in the room was the swirl of scandals surrounding the company. The biggest involved Facebook sharing the data of 87 million users to a researcher at Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting firm. But despite its warnings and weaker numbers, Facebook announced year-on-year revenue growth of more than 40% in the most recent quarter. So is this the beginning of the end of Facebook? Yes, the company's market value dropped around $120bn in one day. But to put that in context, McDonald's is in total worth $122bn on the New York Stock Exchange, with US industrial giant General Electric worth $114bn. But that does not mean Facebook will soon be shutting its doors. not on the basis of one set of numbers. There needs to be a sense of perspective.

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