Facebook beats by $0.64, beats on revs, expects revenue growth rate to remain stable or modestly accelerate sequentially in Q1 and Q2, reaffirms FY21 expense and capex guidance
- Reports Q4 (Dec) earnings of $3.88 per share, $0.64 better than the S&P Capital IQ Consensus of $3.24; revenues rose 33.2% year/year to $28.1 bln vs the $26.4 bln S&P Capital IQ Consensus.
- DAUs were 1.84 billion on average for December 2020, an increase of 11% year-over-year.
- MAUs were 2.80 billion as of December 31, 2020, an increase of 12% year-over-year.
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Outlook: "... Looking forward, a moderation or reversal in one or both of these trends could serve as a headwind to our advertising revenue growth. At the same time, in the first half of 2021, we will be lapping a period of growth that was negatively impacted by reduced advertising demand during the early stages of the pandemic. As a result, we expect year-over-year growth rates in total revenue to remain stable or modestly accelerate sequentially in the first and second quarters of 2021. In the second half of the year, we will lap periods of increasingly strong growth, which will significantly pressure year-over-year growth rates.
- We expect 2021 total expenses to be in the range of $68-73 billion, unchanged from our prior outlook. This is driven by investments in technical and product talent as well as continued growth in infrastructure costs.
- We continue to expect 2021 capital expenditures to be in the range of $21-23 billion, driven by data centers, servers, network infrastructure, and office facilities. Our outlook includes spend that was delayed from 2020 due to the impact of the pandemic on our construction efforts.