Despite being plagued with scandals and calls for big changes, Facebook on Wednesday reported record fourth-quarter profit and said that its user base continued to grow.
The world's largest social network posted $6.88 billion in net income, or $2.38 a share, in the quarter ended Dec. 31, up from $4.27 billion in the year-ago quarter, easily beating analysts' expectations of $6.36 billion, or $2.18 a share. Facebook posted revenue of $16.91 billion, beating analysts' expectations of $16.4 billion.
The Menlo Park company also said its monthly active users rose 9 percent to 2.32 billion, beating analysts' expectations of 2.31 billion. It also said that it estimates about 2.7 billion people now use Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger _ what it calls its "Family" of services _ each month.
Facebook shares, which have fallen more than 33 percent since their 52-week high of $217.50 last July, rose 4.3 percent to $150.42 to close regular trading Wednesday amid a mostly positive day for the U.S. stock markets. They were up nearly 8 percent in after-hours trading after the results were released.
Since Facebook's last earnings call in October, the Menlo Park company has dealt with numerous controversial revelations.
The company was doing damage control in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which blew up last March and involved a political data consulting firm, which was used by Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, accessing the personal information of up to 87 million Facebook users without their permission. That problem, which popped up as Facebook was dealing with questions over Russian interference in U.S. elections, brought CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Washington in April to face Congress.
Plenty of other news reports since then have revealed other practices that the company has either apologized for or discontinued. The most recent _ paying users ages 13 to 35 up to $20 a month in gift cards to install a virtual private network app to gain access to most of their phone activity, supposedly for research _ was reported by TechCrunch just this week. Facebook said it has pulled the app for iPhone users. Its availability on Apple's App Store was against Apple's policies.
Facebook's business practices, plus the way it has dealt with controversy, have prompted calls for changes in leadership, more regulations, an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and more. Last year, California passed a sweeping data privacy bill that was sparked partly by reaction to Facebook's high-profile privacy missteps.
