Facebook has reported better than expected earnings for the first quarter of 2017 as the social media site approaches 2 billion monthly active users.
The company reported US$8.03 billion in revenue for the quarter, an increase of 49% year-on-year and higher than analyst estimates of US$7.83 billion. Profit also surged 76% to US$3.06 billion, and earnings per share of US$1.04 were above estimates of US$0.87.
Next quarter, Facebook is expected to reach the milestone of 2 billion monthly active users after adding 80 million in the first quarter for a total of 1.94 billion.
“We had a good start to 2017… We’re continuing to build tools to support a strong global community.” said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Zuckerberg also announced that Facebook will be adding more staff to moderate content in response to a number of violent attacks and murders that have been live streamed on the site, as well as a range of other offensive posts.
“We’re going to continue building new tools to keep people safe on our platform. Over the next year, we’ll be adding 3,000 people to our community operations team around the world — on top of the 4,500 we already have today — to review the millions of reports we get every week, and to improve the process for doing it quickly,” Zuckerberg said in a conference call.
Revenue from mobile advertising continues to make up the bulk of Facebook’s advertising revenue, and accounted for 85% during Q1 2017 compared to 82% in Q1 2016.
The company also announced that it would no longer report adjusted (or non-GAAP) earnings. Despite beating expectations, Facebook shares were down about 2.5% in after-hours trading.
