According to regulatory filings obtained by Tofler, Facebook India Online Services, the Indian arm of social media giant Facebook, more than doubled its net profit to Rs 136 crore for the fiscal ended March 31, 2020, compared to Rs 65.31 crore in the previous fiscal. In FY20, the company’s EBITDA stood at Rs 417.86 crore.
Compared to Rs 893 crore in FY19, Facebook, which owns sites such as Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, has seen a 43 percent growth in revenues at Rs 1,277 crore.
Net revenue from ads nearly doubled to Rs 520.4 crore from Rs 263.9 crore. IT revenue from the outsourcing of business process services to group companies stood at Rs 695.1 crore as opposed to Rs 628.5 crore.
Compared to Rs 2253.7 crore, the gross sum billed by Facebook to FY20 advertisers is Rs 6612.6 crore. Inventory advertisement costs jumped from Rs 1969.9 crore to Rs 6067.9 crore.
The business operates as a reseller to Indian consumers of advertisement services and provides the Facebook community with sales support and marketing services.
It records advertising sales revenues net of related direct sales costs. The revenues consist mainly of advertisement revenue generated on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and third-party associated websites or mobile apps by displaying ad items.
From 779.75 crore, overall expenditures jumped 34 percent to Rs 1045.67 crore. The cost of employee benefits from Facebook rose 63.3 percent from Rs 183.2 crore to Rs 299.3 crore in FY20. It paid a Rs 369.5 crore equalisation levy against payment in the previous fiscal of Rs 118.2 crore.
In the digital advertisement space, the Indian government imposes a 6 percent equalisation tax on business transactions.
On the effect of Covid-19, the company reported that it intends to recover the carrying sum of all its assets as of 31 March 2020 and that no changes about COVID-19 as of 31 March 2020 are expected, taking into account various internal and external information up to the date of approval of such financial statements.
“The future impact of the current economic situation is uncertain and difficult to predict. The company will continue to closely monitor any material changes to future economic conditions,” Facebook said in the filing.
Tech giant Google India posted a 34.8 percent rise in FY20 revenue to Rs 5,593.8 crore last month compared to Rs 4,147 crore in FY19. In FY20, net profit jumped by 23.9 percent to Rs 586.2 crore as compared to Rs 472.8 crore in the previous fiscal year. In FY20, expenses rose 30.4% to Rs 4,455.5 crore from Rs 3,416.5 crore in 2018-19.
Advertising sales accounted for about 27 percent of the company’s revenues, while IT-enabled services accounted for 32 percent and IT services accounted for 41 percent. An equalisation levy of Rs 611.1 crore in FY20 was charged by Google India.
Google India is interested in providing IT and IT-enabled services to its community of Internet-based companies. The company is also a third-party reseller in India of Google Adwords advertising space programmes and other Google advertising products and services for marketers looking to market their products and services over the Internet to customers and business users.
