Facebook beats in Q1 and boosts daily user growth to 1.45B amidst backlash

Amongst massive criticism over data privacy, Facebook showed the resiliency of its advertising machine by beating Wall Street’s $11.41 billion revenue estimate by raking in $11.97 billion in revenue with $1.69 EPS compared to $1.35 estimate. Daily active users hit 1.45 billion, up 3.57% to revive Facebook’s growth after slower 2.18% growth last quarter. But Facebook only reached 2.2 billion monthly users, a 3.28 percent growth rate that was a little slower than last quarter’s 3.39% growth.

Showing Facebook’s declining web presence, mobile made up $10.7 billion, or 91% of all ad revenue, up from 89% last quarter.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that “Despite facing important challenges, our community and business are off to a strong start in 2018. We are taking a broader view of our responsibility and investing to make sure our services are used for good. But we also need to keep building new tools to help people connect, strengthen our communities, and bring the world closer together.”

This was perhaps the most tumultuous quarter since Facebook went public. Last quarter saw Facebook’s first ever decline in users in a market, with a 700,000 user drop in the US & Canada market following changes to promote well being that reduced the prevalence of viral videos. Meanwhile, Facebook faced intense criticism regarding the Cambridge Analytica scandal and its data privacy practices, leading a massive pull-back of developer capabilities as Zuckerberg headed to testify before congress.