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Facebook’s business isn’t slowing as fast as Wall Street expected

Plus it added 80 million new users last quarter.

Mark Zuckerberg Delivers Keynote Address At Facebook F8 Conference
Mark Zuckerberg Delivers Keynote Address At Facebook F8 Conference
Justin Sullivan / Getty

Facebook’s revenue growth is slowly declining, but the company’s business is still growing faster than Wall Street expected.

The social network reported revenue of $8.03 billion for the first quarter of 2017, a 49 percent jump over the same quarter last year. Analysts were looking for Facebook to bring in $7.83 billion in revenue for the quarter, a 45 percent revenue jump over the same period a year ago.

Facebook has been warning investors for the past six months to brace for a slowdown in the company’s business, a result of both big numbers and the fact that Facebook is running out of places to show people ads inside News Feed.

But that slowdown hasn’t arrived yet, at least not in the way those outside the company expected.

Facebook also reported 1.94 billion total monthly users, up roughly 80 million users from last quarter. It claims 1.28 billion daily active users.

Update: Facebook included a note in its earnings release that it will “no longer [be] reporting non-GAAP expenses, income, tax rate and earnings per share (EPS).”

We asked Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg why the company was making that change, and she said that it had to do with expenses related to the company’s stock-based compensation.

“Stock is a critical part of our compensation structure, so we think investors should focus on our financial performance with stock-based compensation included,” she said during a brief call. Facebook reported $3.22 billion in “share-based compensation” in 2016.

Sandberg added that CFO Dave Wehner plans to address the change in more detail on the company’s earnings call at 5 pm ET.

Facebook stock is down about 1.5 percent in early after-hours trading.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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