Facebook’s Fourth Quarter Earnings Beats Expectations Despite Fake News Issues

Facebook reported fourth-quarter earnings on Wednesday.

Total revenue rose to $8.81 billion from $5.84 billion a year ago. Analysts’ estimates typically exclude one-time items. “Our business did well in 2016, but we have a lot of work ahead to help bring people together”.

Facebook is expected to appeal the verdict. In the final minutes of trading on Wednesday, shares hit $133.23, a rise of 16 percent in the last 12 months.

Facebook keeps raking in the profits, thanks to ever-growing user numbers: The company reported Wednesday that it now has 1.84 billion monthly active users, and that it generated more than $10 billion in net income in 2016.

Facebook, Inc. builds products that enable people to connect and share through mobile devices and personal computers.

Facebook’s user base is getting bigger by the day with its latest earnings report showing the social media giant is inching closer to the two billion mark on a monthly basis. That knocked the stock down 9 percent in the hours immediately after the report. That level of insane growth pulled down an unimaginable $26.8 billion in ad revenue.

We’ll report more from the earnings call later today. This is all due to the profitable video ads. Facebook has been after TV ad budgets for years, and mid-roll video ads may be the company’s best chance to capture them.

In the future, Facebook hopes to develop the use of Facebook Live, its live video broadcasting tool.

The company’s gains were largely driven by an increase in mobile advertising.

Facebook has been adding features to attract more users and retain those already on the network, with a feature to tackle fake news posts being the most recent addition, after the criticism that followed the USA election on November 8. “In the meantime, core Facebook is growing extremely well, with nearly unprecedented ad revenue growth consistency”. Capital expenditures for the full year 2016 were $4.49 billion. Revenue jumped 54% to US$27.6 billion for 2016 (or more than US$500 million a week) from US$17.9 billion the year before and more than double 2014’s US$12.4 billion.