Financial market research and analysis

After the bell it’s about Facebook results.

Among the most notable data, it might be interesting to see how Facebook's virtual reality headset, the Oculus Rift, has performed so far. The device price is $1.500 a piece and Zuckerberg said it will be considered a success for the company only if it will reach the 50-100, million units sold.
In January the company recorded extraordinary growth, monthly active users rose 14% to 1.59 billion in the fourth quarter, worth a $5.841 billion in revenue and $0.79 earnings per share.

Facebook’s monthly user count grew at a slower pace of 2.58% quarter over quarter from Q3’s extremely strong 4.02% gain, and this could show that Facebook might be close to hitting saturation point in some markets but it still has a lot of room to grow in many developing countries.
The number of daily users count in January was 1.04 billion, increased by 2.97% if compared to Q3, and if we compare the DAU (Daily Active Users) with MAU (Monthly Active Users) we find a ratio of 65% which would indicate that active users remain steady despite a potentially ageing demographic.
In January, mobile use generated 80% of Facebook advertising revenue, the advertising money generated through social media network is still a great component of earnings and the company continues to strive to ensure the user base finds new way of sharing their personal information and content.

A potential warning signal comes from a recent survey of 100 people in Australia, many are ‘worried’ they may regret what they share in the years to come, in particular since they have hundreds of relationship through the 12 year old platform.

On the other side the rise of Snapchat, Facebook's Instagram and WhatsApp, also owned by Facebook, have created alternative ways to share personal experiences, preferences, photos and videos with individuals or more select groups of friends. Instagram had just 30 million users when it was bought two years after its 2010 launch. Today the photo-sharing app has more than 400 million users.

In general the consensus among analysts is that Facebook is set to report good, steady growth.

The share price, having nosedived in the early part of 2016 has managed to recoup and regroup. The intraday low on January 20th of $89.37 was only viewed as an opportunity for investors and we have witnessed a 23% gain since that date.

The stock may have lost some momentum since marking an intraday record high ($117.59) on February 2nd; only managing to reach $116.99 in the early part of April and while price action oscillated the 50 day moving average, a greater pull back might be on the cards.
Despite this current consolidation, the uptrend remains fairly strong and any corrections would be expected to be limited to the 200DMA rising support at $101.41 and the$100 psychological level range.

The implied volatility from the options market suggests a swing in either direction of around 8% which tends to vindicate the $100 support level.

Conversely, upside volatility could see the record highs challenged.

Analysts’ opinion for FB has 17 strong buy, 29 buy, 3 hold and 1 underperform, while, Apple has 17 strong buy, 21 buy, eight Hold and one Sell rating. The stock for Facebook is currently traded at $110.45 in premarket, while Apple is being traded at $104.48.