Facebook posts ‘decent earnings report’ for 3Q

NEW YORK — Facebook didn’t hit it out of the ballpark with its latest quarterly report, but the bar isn’t so high these days for the image-battered social networking giant.

The company reported a slight revenue miss but stronger-than-expected profit for the July-September period. Coming three months after its stock suffered its worst one-day drop in history, wiping out $119 billion of its market value, the mixed results were perhaps not the redemption Facebook hoped for.

Shares were volatile in after-hours trading — dropping the most, briefly, when executives discussed a decline in expected revenue growth and increasing expenses during the conference call. Still, the stock generally vacillated in the low single-digit percentages, suggesting, at least, that the social media giant didn’t spook investors too badly.

With the myriad problems Facebook is facing, that passes for good news these days.

“Overall, given all the challenges Facebook has faced this year, this is a decent earnings report,” said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson.

Facebook had 2.27 billion monthly users at the end of the quarter, below the 2.29 billion analysts were expecting. Facebook says it changed the way it calculates users, which reduced the total slightly. The company’s user base was still up 10 percent from 2.07 billion monthly users a year ago.

The company earned $5.14 billion, or $1.76 per share, up 9 percent from $4.71 billion, or $1.59 per share, a year earlier. Revenue was $13.73 billion, an increase of 33 percent, for the July-September period.

Analysts had expected earnings of $1.46 per share on revenue of $13.77 billion, according to FactSet.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said 2019 will be “another year of significant investment” during the earnings call. After that, he said, “I know that we need to make sure our costs and revenue are better matched over time.”