Facebook cruises past Wall Street estimates as ‘fake news’ shrugged off
Bengaluru/New York — Facebook cruised past Wall Street’s earnings and revenue expectations on Wednesday with strong growth in its mobile ad business, demonstrating that controversy over so-called "fake news" and inaccurate advertising measurements had little impact on its financial performance. With quarterly profit of $3.57bn, more than double the $1.56bn reported a year ago, the company showed no signs of a slowdown in growth. The results handily beat analysts’ expectations, and shares ticked up about 0.2% in after-hours trading. The company had warned in November that ad growth would likely slow "meaningfully" due to limits on ad load — the total number of ads Facebook can show to each user. But there was little sign of this in the fourth quarter as total revenue soared to $8.81bn from $5.84bn a year ago. "I think the rate of growth will decline, but it will remain very high," said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter. "They grew 57% in 2016, and our current model has ‘only...
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