Facebook is gaining ground ahead of Zuckerberg's testimony (FB)

pulse

April 10, 2018 12:51 PM

Facebook has seen about $79 billion of market cap wiped out since news of the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to give two days of congressional testimony on Capitol Hill related to the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.
Shares of Facebook were up 0.88% ahead of Monday's opening bell.
Facebook has seen about $79 billion of market cap wiped out since news of the scandal broke.

Shares of Facebook are ticking higher, up 0.88% at $159.33, ahead of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's congressional testimony on the Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

Zuckerberg is scheduled to appear before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees Tuesday starting at 2:15 p.m. ET before testifying in front of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday. The hearings will allow members of Congress an opportunity to get a sense of Facebook's privacy problems — and what can and should be done about them.

Facebook shares have been rocked since news of the scandal first surfaced on March 18. Since then, they have lost more than 14% of their value and $79 billion in market capitalization.

And while the scandal has weighed on Facebook shares, users are staying on the platform.

"Despite the noise of Cambridge Analytica, time spent on core Facebook has not waned in the days following the announcement," the Jefferies analyst Brent Thill said in a note to clients Monday. "Compared to March 2017, time spent is up on average by 15% for the month of March 2018."

Thill did, however, lower his Facebook target to $215 from $230.

Facebook shares are down about 13% this year.

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