Facebook has once again showed that backlash in the media and among political and regulatory circles does not necessarily translate into poor business performance as the social media company reported growth in the third quarter of the current fiscal despite ongoing public relations crises.

The company reported a growth of 1.65 per cent quarter on quarter in the monthly users which reached 2.45 billion. The number in the second quarter was at 2.41 billion. The company now has a total of 1.62 billion daily active users which is 2 per cent more than the 1.587 billion number the company reported in the preceding quarter when its growth rate in this metric was 1.6 per cent.

The largest social media of the world also reported a 29 per cent year on year growth in revenues for the quarter at $17.652 billion while announcing $2.12 in earnings per share.

The company beat market expectations in revenues, according to Refinitiv’s consensus estimates of $17.37 billion in revenue as well as in earnings per share which was expected to be $1.91 per share.

The good performance of the company also reflected in its share price that rose by Facebook shares rose 5.18 per cent.

One of the more encouraging numbers for Facebook was its gaining of users in each of its core U.S. & Canada and Europe markets at 2 million users for each after the company had either lost or had flat growth or weak growth in the number of users in the two markets in the last eight previous quarters. There was also healthy growth in the average revenue per user across all markets which reflected that ability of the company to monetize its services in the developing markets which account for the user growth for the company currently.

Every day, about 2.2 billion users access Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger, Facebook says, while every month one of this family of apps is used by 2.8 billion users. Those figures were 2.1 billion and 2.7 billion more respectively compared to the last quarter.

These figures augur well for Facebook because it has been facing stiff competition from a revived Snapchat and from the TikTok app in more recent times. However analysts say traht these rivals could have a much more acute impact on Instagram, the data for which is not disclosed by Facebook.

However the announcement by Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey of imposing a complete ban on political ad on the social media platform somewhat overshadowed the earnings announcement by Facebook. The announcement puts additional pressure on Facebook to follow suit and reconsider its stance and policy of not fact checking content of political ads on its platform. The company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg has lend strong support for the policy of the platform to allow politicians post ads without any need for fact checking the contents.

Citing WhatsApp Payments, Facebook Marketplace and Instagram shopping, Zuckerberg explained that Facebook was already diversified in commerce if that doesn’t work out, in relation to Libra’s regulatory pushback.

(Adapted from TechCrunch.com)

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