What scandal? Facebook easily beats earnings estimates with EPS of $1.69

Facebook may still be mired in the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but if all you were looking at is its bottom line, you might never know anything was wrong. Today, Mark Zuckerberg’s company released its first-quarter earnings report, and it handily beat analysts’ estimates, posting revenues of $11.97 billion, and earnings per share of $1.69, well above predictions of $11.41 billion and $1.35, respectively.

“Despite facing important challenges, our community and business are off to a strong start in 2018,” Zuckerberg said in a statement. “We are taking a broader view of our responsibility and investing to make sure our services are used for good. But we also need to keep building new tools to help people connect, strengthen our communities, and bring the world closer together.”

Facebook’s stock closed the day exactly unchanged, at $159.69. In after-hours trading, reflecting the strong earnings report, shares were up sharply, gaining 4.41% to $167.05 as of this writing.

The company also said it now has 1.45 billion daily users, up 3.6% from the previous quarter, and 2.2 billion monthly users, up 3.3% from three months ago.