Facebook posts double-digit growth in quarterly, yearly revenues

US top social networking company Facebook Inc on Wednesday reported double-digit revenue growth for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2019.

Facebook said it earned a total revenue of about US$21.08 billion for the fourth quarter with a year-over-year growth of 25 percent, slightly beating market estimates of US$20.89 billion. It netted about US$16.9 billion in the same period of 2018.

The yearly revenue rose 27 percent to reach about US$70.7 billion in 2019, compared to about US$55.8 billion in the year before.

The growth delivered better-than-expected profits of US$2.56 in earnings per share as measured by generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP.

The Silicon Valley social networking giant witnessed a 25 percent increase in advertising revenue, which hit US$20.7 billion for the fourth quarter, compared to the figure of US$16.6 billion earned in the corresponding period of 2018.

Its net income stood at US$7.3 billion for the quarter, up 7 percent, but the annual net earnings fell 16 percent from US$22.1 billions posted in 2018 to US$18.49 billion for fiscal 2019.

Facebook said it has 1.66 billion daily active users on average for December 2019, an increase of 9 percent year on year, while the monthly active users were 2.50 billion at the end of December 2019, up 8 percent year on year.

About 2.89 billion people were monthly actively users who logged in to one of the Facebook Family services.

Facebook's Family daily active people rose 11 percent year on year to reach 2.26 billion on average for December 2019.

"We had a good quarter and a strong end to the year as our community and business continue to grow," said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.