Despite a tough year, Facebook keeps growing with $16.9 billion revenue in Q4 2018

Over the last year, Facebook has been filled with a number of data privacy scandals and seemingly nonstop bad news- however, regardless of the ongoings, its revenue and user count continue to grow. After a stronger than expected fourth quarter (Q4) revenue, the Facebook shares also hit a four-month high.

Despite being under scrutiny for spreading fake news, the social media giant reported a rise in monthly active users from 2.27 billion to 2.32 billion. The daily active users also grew from 1.49 billion to 1.52 billion over the last three months of 2018. These numbers are both up from last quarter by 1.8 percent and have aided the revenue hit $16.9 billion in Q4, beating the Wall Street expectations of $16.4.

Following the stronger than expected fourth-quarter revenue announcement, the company’s stock jumped by over 6 percent, and the shares hit a four-month high. According to Facebook, the December quarter earnings came in at $2.38 per share, firmly ahead of the Wall Street consensus of $2.20, as revenues rose 30%. The record revenue and profit announcements lifted the Facebook shares which hovered around $167, still down from $186 where it was a year ago and a peak of $217 in July.

CEO Facebook Mark Zuckerberg told investors, “I think it’s worth emphasizing that while I’m excited about the road map that we have and it’s going to be great over the long term, the growth of the business over the next year, a few quarters or the near term is going to be mostly based on the growth of (Instagram) Stories and the core News Feed work,” on a conference call late Wednesday.

The Q4 revenue growth is by no means the best Facebook has had, but it does mark a somewhat return to the company’s usual upward trend after signs that it might be beginning to falter. However, Facebook also highlighted the fact that fake and duplicated accounts have also gone up, with 116 million fake accounts and 255 million duplicate accounts on the site suggesting that it’s not all good news.

Needless to say, no matter what level of crisis Facebook is going through over the recent past, its financial state seems better than ever.