Facebook Sales Top Estimates on Gains in Mobile Advertising

Facebook’s fourth-quarter revenue climbed more than forecast, driven by advertisers’ continued push to reach consumers on mobile phones, according to Bloomberg. The world’s largest social-media company said sales jumped 51 percent to $8.81 billion, topping the $8.51 billion average analyst projection. Monthly active users on its main social network increased 17 percent from a year earlier to 1.86 billion people, with 1.23 billion checking daily and 1.74 billion accessing it via their smartphones.

Facebook has solidified its position as No. 2 in the market for mobile advertising, behind Alphabet’s Google. The company last year started selling more marketing spots and added e-commerce tools to Instagram, its photo-sharing app that now has more than 600 million users. Facebook also expanded video advertising, drawing ad dollars that might otherwise have gone to television commercials. Mobile advertising made up about 84 percent of total ad revenue in the quarter, Facebook said.

Profit excluding some items was $1.41 a share, compared to the $1.31 average analyst estimate, according to data gathered by Bloomberg. Facebook’s revenue gains had been expected to slow this year because the company has said it won’t keep increasing the percentage of ads shown in users’ News Feeds. That means it’s leaning on other growing areas, like Instagram, as well as new forms of advertising, such as ads in live video. Meanwhile, the company has said it plans to substantially increase its spending on new data centers and engineers.

Now, the company is part of a debate about the Trump administration’s policies, with its top two executives, CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg, speaking out against his executive orders. The events of the last year “reinforced the importance of connecting the world,“ Zuckerberg said on a conference call. Still, when it comes to the business, Facebook doesn’t expect to be negatively affected by any new immigration restrictions. “We’ve got other markets in which we can recruit and grow engineering and technical teams,“ like London and Tel Aviv, CFO David Wehner said.