Facebook’s Q4 profit was at an all-time high, owing to its rising global user base despite its reputation going downhill day by day.
The company’s co-founder and the chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that the quarterly profit of Facebook rose by a massive $6.9 billion. The revenue has increased 30 percent over the same quarter last year.
Moreover, the number of users have soared nine percent, reaching 2.32 billion. The company revealed the statistics in its fourth-quarter update.
The net profit of the company, mainly coming from online advertising, increased 61 percent from the same period last year.
“Our community and business continue to grow,” said Zuckerberg during an earnings call.
The company’s share value increased by 11 percent to $167.67 in the after-market trading that occurred after the release of earnings.
The latest update indicates that Facebook has increased its user base in Europe and the United States (US). Notably, in both regions, the company has faced trouble amid data protection scandals.
The current earnings show that those scandals have not impacted Facebook at all. According to an analyst, Debra Aho Williamson from the research firm eMarketer,
With these results, Facebook has clearly demonstrated that the challenges of 2018 have not had a lasting impact on its ability to increase both revenues and usage.
“Advertisers are clearly still very reliant on Facebook,” she adds.
The analyst says that an increase in the daily active users in Europe and North America has come as a surprise. Only last year, the daily usage was flat in the US and Canada while experiencing a decline in Europe.
The company has promised to hire thousands of employees and invest in technologies that can respond to the concerns about manipulation and abuse. It has pledged to take data protection more seriously.
The number of employees at Facebook has increased by 42 percent as of December 31.
Furthermore, Facebook is going to account for 20.5 percent of the global digital ad market space in 2019.
