Facebook posts beat on revenue and EPS, still faces COVID uncertainty
Facebook reported earnings that topped the Street's expectations. The social media company posted $3.88 EPS and $28.07B in revenue, outperforming consensus estimates of $3.22 EPS and $26.41B in revenue.
Video Transcript
SEANA SMITH: And we want to get to some breaking news. Facebook is out with its earnings results. Jared Blikre has those numbers for us. Jared.
JARED BLIKRE: That's right. We've got some nice beat beats on the key metrics, but you can see the stock is down 5% there after-- in the initial moments after that was released. So here are the numbers. Fourth quarter revenue for the firm came in at $28.07 billion. The estimate was for lower, $26.41 billion. So nice beat there.
When we take a look at fourth quarter EPS, that came in at $3.88. The estimate was for lower at $3.22. And then, the monthly active users, 2.8 billion. That's, what, one-third of the-- actually, more-- the world's population. So 2.8 billion. The estimate was for 2.76 billion daily active users. So on a daily basis, 1.84 billion. Estimate was for 1.83 billion.
One of the headlines here that's catching my attention is that they continue to face significant uncertainty. And so, that might be one of the reasons their outlook of why the stock is down here. Also, they saw a tailwind to advertising business in the second half of 2020. That was due to all the political advertising. Of course, that is dropping off as well.
A couple other measures here from the report, Facebook headcount was 58,604 as of December 31st. And just a couple of quotes from the report, they're seeing first quarter and second quarter growth rate in revenue as being stable, moderately faster. But they do see more significant ad targeting headwinds in 2021. So just to recap here, we've got nice beats on both the top and bottom lines, also in monthly and daily active users. But that outlook probably spooking investors a little bit. It's down-- the stock is now down 5.7%. Guys.
