It depends on the business a company is in. Some businesses by nature have lower margins and have to make it up on volume, and the process requires a lot of la

It depends on the business a company is in. Some businesses by nature have lower margins and have to make it up on volume, and the process requires a lot of labour, just due to the nature of the business. For example, retail and logistics companies. While I haven't done the analysis yet, I can see how Facebook's business is probably higher margin than HP's business. HP provides hardware, services, etc, at a large but limited scale. Facebook provides a web service to a global population at a seemingly unlimited scale. edit: Also look at which has more growth potential (which is admittedly under debate right now for Facebook).