SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 29 (Xinhua) -- U.S. top social networking company Facebook Inc. Wednesday reported double-digit revenue growth for the fourth quarter and full year ended Dec. 31, 2019.

File photo: CGTN

Facebook said it earned a total revenue of about 21.08 billion U.S. dollars for the fourth quarter with a year-over-year growth of 25 percent, slightly beating market estimates of 20.89 billion dollars. It netted about 16.9 billion dollars in the same period of 2018.

The yearly revenue rose 27 percent to reach about 70.7 billion dollars in 2019, compared to about 55.8 billion dollars in the year before.

The growth delivered better-than-expected profits of 2.56 dollars in earnings per share as measured by generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP.

The Silicon Valley social networking giant witnessed a 25 percent increase in advertising revenue, which hit 20.7 billion dollars for the fourth quarter, compared to the figure of 16.6 billion dollars earned in the corresponding period of 2018.

Its net income stood at 7.3 billion dollars for the quarter, up 7 percent, but the annual net earnings fell 16 percent from 22.1 billions dollars posted in 2018 to 18.49 billion dollars for fiscal 2019.

Facebook said it has 1.66 billion daily active users (DAUs) on average for December 2019, an increase of 9 percent year-over-year, while the monthly active users (MAUs) were 2.50 billion at the end of December 2019, up 8 percent year-over-year.

About 2.89 billion people were monthly actively users who logged in to one of the Facebook Family services.

Facebook's Family daily active people rose 11 percent year-over-year to reach 2.26 billion on average for December 2019.

"We had a good quarter and a strong end to the year as our community and business continue to grow," said Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.