Meta’s fourth-quarter results jumped past Wall Street’s expectations thanks to solid advertising revenue, sending shares sharply higher in after-hours trading Wednesday. The company earned $22.77 billion, or $8.88 per share, in the October-December quarter. Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $8.21 per share on revenue of $58.5 billion, according to a poll by FactSet. For the current quarter, Meta is forecasting revenue in the range of $53.5 billion to $56.5 billion. Meta had 78,865 employees at the end of the year, an increase of 6% from a year earlier.