Cloud computing

29 January 2020 By Jennifer Saba Follow @jennifersaba

Investors may be punishing Mark Zuckerberg’s $636 bln social network for rising costs and slower sales last quarter, even though it had flagged them and beat estimates. A bigger issue is that Facebook is lumping WhatsApp and Instagram into user metrics. It should aim for clarity.

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Facebook’s fourth-quarter revenue rose 25% from the same period in 2018 to $21.1 billion, the company reported on Jan. 29. Earnings were $7.3 billion, or $2.56 per share, compared to $6.9 billion, or $2.38 per share, during the same quarter in the prior year. Total costs and expenses rose 34%.

The number of daily active users rose to 1.66 billion. Analysts were expecting 1.65 billion daily active users, according to Refinitiv.

Additionally, the company said that “family daily active people,” or the underlying number of unique people using one or more of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger “and/or" WhatsApp was 2.3 billion, an increase of 11% on the fourth quarter of 2018.

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