Wednesday 01 February 2017 9:25 pm

Facebook’s profit rockets despite a jury ruling against its VR firm Oculus

Facebook's profits shot sky high in 2016, but a jury decided tonight it will pay $500m for its virtual-reality firm Oculus, which came under fire for breaking a non-disclosure agreement.

The figures

Facebooks profit rose 177 per cent to $10.2bn (£8.1bn) for the year ended 31 December.

Revenue for the fourth quarter was up 51 per cent to $8.8bn, pushing sales for the year ended 31 December to $27.6bn, up a whopping 54 per cent from the previous year.

Advertising takings hit $8.6bn over the three-month period, 84 per cent of which was made from mobile devices, up from around 80 per cent in the prior year.

The social media giant had 1.23bn daily active users in December, an increase of 18 per cent year-on-year, while its figures for mobile daily active users rose 23 per cent to 1.15bn on average for the same month.

Basic earnings per share were up to $1.31 for the full year from $1.29.

Shares rose 2.7 per cent at $136.78 in after-hours trading.

Why its interesting

Research firm FactSet StreetAccount said analysts had expected total advertising revenue of $8.3bn on average, Reuters reported.

As Facebook beat analysts, investors can sigh a breath of relief – they were concerned over comments the company made in November that advertising growth would slow "meaningfully" as they hit a limit on the total number of ads Facebook can show each user.

However, many analysts have raised concerns about Facebook's ability to meet its own targets each quarter, Reuters said.

What Facebook said

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and chief executive, said: "Our mission to connect the world is more important now than ever. Our business did well in 2016, but we have a lot of work ahead to help bring people together."