Facebook Ireland records revenues of €94m per day

Facebook's revenue increase was due to growth in advertising revenues from third party customers.

Revenues at the main Irish based unit of social media giant, Facebook last year surged by 34.5% to a record €34.32bn - or an average of €94m per day.

New accounts show that the €8.8bn surge in revenues to €34.32bn contributed to Facebook Ireland Ltd’s pre-tax profits increasing by 33% to €481.88m for 2019.

The company’s corporate tax liability increased almost three-fold from €63.2m to €173.22m.

The chief reason for the sharp increase in corporation tax is Facebook Ireland agreeing in October 2020 “to the resolution of certain tax matters with tax authorities relating to prior tax years”.

The note states that this resulted in additional taxes due of €53m.

The note points out that the tax liability is recognised for the 2019 accounts along with a related interest liability and expense of €27m.

As a result, Facebook Ireland’s post-tax profits for last year totalled €306.65m.

The accounts also reveal that Facebook Ireland last year set aside €302.3m concerning “amounts identified for administrative fines arising from various regulatory compliance matters principally under investigation by the relevant data protection supervisory authorities”. Facebook Ireland’s best estimate of the expenditure used to discharge these obligations to be between €154m and €541m.

The note states that the estimate is based on advice from outside counsel, regulatory correspondence received to date, relevant mitigating factors and comparison with similar matters.

The revenues generated by Facebook Ireland last year account for 59% of the social media giant’s global revenues of $70.6bn in 2019.

Numbers employed by Facebook Ireland last year increased by 46% or 614 to 1,944.

The company last year paid out €201m in salaries which equates to an average salary of €103,443.

The salary total of €201m doesn’t include €58.49m in share based payments and €34m in other benefits to employees.

Facebook Ireland’s staff here are made up of sales and marketing - 740, community operations - 512, administration - 448 and engineering 244.

Directors’ pay increased from €706,000 to €1.3m as an additional three people joined the board in 2019.

The directors state that the revenue increase was due to growth in advertising revenues from third party customers.

The company last year paid a dividend of €15m. Facebook recorded an operating profit of €488 million and net interest paid out of €7m resulted in the pre-tax profit of €481.88m.