Facebook posts record profit

US – Facebook has posted record results for the final quarter and full-year of 2018.

The company’s net income was $6.88bn for the final quarter of 2018, up 60% from the last quarter of 2017 ($4,27bn). Revenue also grew 30% to $16.6bn.

The results exceeded analyst expectations, despite Facebook’s troubled year, following revelations over how it treated users’ personal data in the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s founder and chief executive, said in a statement accompanying the results: "We've fundamentally changed how we run our company to focus on the biggest social issues, and we're investing more to build new and inspiring ways for people to connect."

On Wednesday, Apple said that it had banned Facebook from publishing certain apps, after TechCrunch reported that the social media company was paying users aged 13 to 35 a monthly fee to install an app called Facebook Research to gather data on their browsing habits.