Facebook reported adjusted fourth-quarter earnings and revenue on Wednesday that crushed expectations, as it made more money than expected from each user.

The company's shares, which initially dropped sharply in after-hours trading, recovered after CFO David Wehner maintained the company's 2018 expense forecast and said Facebook would benefit from a weaker dollar in the first half of the year.

EPS: $2.21 vs. $1.95 expected by a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate

Revenue: $12.97 billion vs. $12.55 billion expected by a Thomson Reuters consensus estimate

Daily active users: 1.4 billion vs. 1.41 billion expected by a StreetAccount estimate

Monthly active users: 2.13 billion vs. 2.13 billion expected by a StreetAccount estimate

ARPU: $6.18 vs. $5.90 expected by a StreetAccount estimate

That's compared to earnings of $1.41 per share on revenue of $8.81 billion in the year-ago period. Usership also rose about 14 percent from a year ago on both a daily and monthly basis.

Facebook also said its daily active users declined in the United States and Canada, its most lucrative market. Daily users fell from 185 million to 184 million in the quarter. Its monthly user total was flat in North America.

The company said it had made changes, including a crackdown on viral videos, that reduced the amount of time users spent on its social network by 50 million hours a day in the quarter, or 5 percent.

Shares at first fell as much as 4.5 percent after hours, but recovered after executives said that advertising prices increased, balancing out audience declines, and that they expected operating expenses guidance wouldn't change, remaining at growth of 45 percent to 60 percent.

In premarket trading Thursday, Facebook shares were up nearly 2 percent.

Facebook has been adding workers to boost security and said it now has 14,000 dedicated to site operations, or roughly double a year ago.

Shares then rose 2 percent above the stock's closing price after Wehner said currency movements would provide a "tailwind."