Facebook Q4 results soar in prelude to an uncertain 2021

Facebook capped a tumultuous 2020 with soaring earnings in the final quarter, its user base boosted by people staying home and its revenue buoyed by a shift to digital advertising amid the pandemic.
But the company predicted uncertainty for 2021 and said its revenue in the latter half of the year could face significant pressure. Because revenue grew so quickly in the second half of 2020, the social network could have trouble keeping up that pace.
It’s also facing challenges in how it targets advertisements, including Apple’s coming launch of privacy protections that could limit Facebook’s ability to target ads.
“Clearly the pandemic has also continued to help Facebook’s monthly active user growth to remain strong in many regions, including in the U.S. and Canada, where prior to the pandemic, user gains had slowed to a crawl,” said eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson. But she noted that the number of daily users in this region declined, suggesting that people in the U.S. and Canada are moving elsewhere – probably TikTok, which grew quickly in 2020.