Facebook's Q4 Earnings: You're More Valuable to Facebook Than Ever

Your value to Facebook keeps climbing higher.

Facebook reported its Q4 and full year 2015 earnings Wednesday afternoon. The key numbers: Facebook reported profits of 79 cents per share on $5.8 billion in revenue for Q4, a jump in sales of roughly 52 percent over the same period last year. That was above analyst estimates of 68 cents per share on revenue of $5.37 billion.

Another key metric, ARPU or average revenue per user, is also climbing, up nearly 26 percent to $3.73. That’s key because, as we pointed out this morning, Facebook’s user growth is slowing and it needs to show that it can keep making more money off the same size user base. That is indeed happening.

Facebook

Facebook’s user base is growing. It reported 1.59 billion monthly users, up 14 percent over last year. It also has over one billion daily active users, up 17 percent from the year before.

Essentially, it’s making money from each user at a faster rate than the amount of users it is signing up.

Facebook executives are set to address analysts and media members at 5 pm ET when we’ll hear more about the company’s finances. One thing you can expect to hear about is video and how Facebook’s video ad business is performing. Facebook has been pushing heavily into video over the last two years, and it has positioned itself as a competitor to TV advertising, although it’s still trying to prove that out.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg spoke with Re/code immediately after the earnings dropped and said ad dollars are certainly shifting to mobile.

“In terms of replacing TV, we certainly don’t think we’re going to replace any one medium,” she said. “Our growth is pretty broad. We do think that eyeballs are shifting, not just from TV but from a lot of other formats to mobile. And we are positioned very well to not just participate but to lead that shift.”

One thing you won’t hear on this afternoon’s earnings call will be Oculus sales numbers or Instagram advertising revenue. We knew that already, but Sandberg confirmed as much on our call.

Facebook’s stock moved up 7.5 percent in after-hours trading as a result of the earnings numbers.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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