Newsletter
Social networking giant Facebook announced its Q4 2016 results yesterday, reporting a net income of $3.56 billion and $8.8 billion in total revenue for the three-month period from October to December 2016. The company also said that its monthly active user base has increased significantly over the past year, hitting 1.86 billion during the final three months of 2016. The earnings beat Reuters’ estimates of $8.51 billion, sending the company’s shares soaring by almost three percent in after-hours trading on the NASDAQ. For the full year, Facebook reported a total revenue of approximately $27.64 billion and a net income of just under $10.22 billion. According to a statement released by the company’s founder and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg, the company still has a lot to do to grow its platform in the coming years.
Facebook also reported that its daily active user count was averaging 1.23 billion in 2016, 18 percent more in comparison to 2015, and this growth reportedly beat Wall Street’s expectations. Meanwhile, the number of people accessing the social networking platform from mobile devices continued to rise, with the company reporting 1.74 billion monthly active mobile users and 1.15 billion daily active mobile users. The Menlo Park-based social media giant also reported significant growth in emerging markets, with India contributing heavily to its rapidly expanding user base.
Much like Google, Facebook is also heavily reliant on its advertising revenue, as approximately $8.63 billion out of its total Q4 2016 revenue of $8.8 billion came from advertising. Mobile devices have been contributing a significant chunk of its ad revenues in recent times and yesterday, the company announced that as much as 84% its ad revenue came from mobile devices during the previous quarter. However, with the company’s Chief Financial Officer David Wehner recently saying that he expects ad growth to slow down significantly in 2017, it will be interesting to see how the company makes up for that in the coming months. The social networking site also recently came under fire for failing to prevent the spread of fake news on its platform, which some commentators believe may have influenced the result of the U.S. presidential election last November. In overall, Facebook has an interesting year ahead of it.