Facebook closed above $1 Trillion in market capitalization on Monday for the first time.
The milestone marks the fifth U.S.-based company to reach this point, following Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. After a favorable law ruling which dismissed an antitrust lawsuit brought by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (USFC) and a coalition of state attorneys general, shares of the company closed at $355.64.
Facebook’s personalized ads that are shown to Instagram and Facebook users make up nearly all of the company’s revenue. It also has a growing hardware business, where it is developing products such as the Portal video-calling device and Oculus virtual reality headsets and smart glasses. These products are expected to be released in 2021.
Facebook’s initial public offering was held in May 2012. It had a market capitalization of $104 billion.
After posting disappointing user and revenue figures for the second quarter, the company saw a 19% drop. This was in spite of numerous scandals in 2018, including fake news, data leaks and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a data company improperly accessed data from 87 million Facebook users to target ads for Donald Trump in 2016.
Despite all the scandals, Facebook has been able to rebound and has continued to grow its user base and increase its average revenue per person. Since July 27, 2018, the stock price has risen more than 90%.
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