McCarthy Tétrault LLP PO Box 48, Suite 5300 Toronto-Dominion Bank Tower Toronto ON M5K 1E6 Canada Tel: 416-362-1812 Fax: 416-868-0673
Nikiforos Iatrou Partner Direct Line: (416) 601-7642 Email: niatrou@mccarthy.ca
August 25, 2020 Via Email The Honourable Justice Denis Gascon Competition Tribunal 90 Sparks Street Ottawa, ON K1P 5B4
Dear Justice Gascon: Re: Facebook, Inc: CT-2020-004 We write, with the Commissioner’s consent, on behalf of Facebook, Inc. (“Facebook”) in relation to the Consent Agreement filed with the Competition Tribunal on May 19, 2020 (the “Agreement”). It has recently come to our attention that there is a factual error in the Agreement’s recitals. With the Competition Bureau’s (“Bureau”) consent, we respectfully ask you to rectify this error as suggested out below.
The error appears on page 2 of the Agreement in the following recital: “AND WHEREAS the Respondent has reported that average revenue per user in the United States and Canada was USD $34.86 of revenue per month during Q4 of 2018”. Pursuant to Facebook’s filings with the U.S. SEC, 1 this revenue figure is in fact per quarter. Thus, we would like to correct this recital by striking out the words “per month”. Deputy Commissioner of Competition Josephine Palumbo, copied, concurs with this change and our suggested solution, which is that page 2 of the Consent Agreement be replaced by the attached revised version, which deletes those words.
Should you wish to discuss this further, we are of course at your disposal. Yours truly,
Nikiforos Iatrou cc. Josephine Palumbo, Derek Leschinsky and Eric Buist, Competition Bureau and Competition Bureau Legal Services
1 See page 28 of Facebook’s Q-10 for the first quarter of 2019, which states that Facebook’s average revenue per user (“ARPU”) for the U.S. and Canada for the quarter ending December 31, 2018 was $34.86. ARPU is defined as follows: “total revenue in a given geography during a given quarter, divided by the average of the number of [Monthly Active Users]…”: https://investor.fb.com/financials/sec-filings-details/default.aspx?FilingId=13374999.
204930/525893 MT DOCS 20669023v4