Technology

Facebook Posts an Earnings Blowout

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) has reported its earnings for the second quarter which handily beat expectations. The social media giant earned $0.42 in earnings per share and it posted a gain in revenues up to $2.91 billion from $1.81 a year ago. The market was expecting Mark Zuckerberg and team to report earnings of $ $0.32 per share (versus $0.19 a year ago) and a 55% jump in revenues to $2.81 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

Facebook managed to show that 62% of all ad revenues was from mobile. This was above what seemed to be a 60% share expectation, and was up from 59% from the company’s first quarter.

Margins are screaming as well. Facebook’s non-GAAP operating margin was 59% for the second quarter of 2014, up from 44% a year earlier. The company’s cash and marketable securities were $13.96 billion at the end of the second quarter as well.

Here is what Facebook showed for its own internal measurement metrics (year over year performance) for the second quarter and compared to the first quarter after the year-over-year comparisons:

  • Daily active users (DAUs) were 829 million on average for June 2014, an increase of 19% year-over-year and up from 802 million on average for March 2014 (up 21% then);
  • Mobile DAUs were up 39% to 654 million , compared to 609 million on average for March 2014 (up 43% then);
  • Monthly active users (MAUs) were up 14% to 1.32 billion, versus 1.28 billion as of March 2014 (up 15% then);
  • and Mobile MAUs were up 31% to 1.07 billion, versus 1.01 billion as of March (up 34% then).

Revenue from advertising was $2.68 billion, a 67% increase from a year ago. The prize – mobile monetization – represented approximately 62% of all advertising revenue for the second quarter (up from approximately 41% a year ago).

Facebook shares closed up almost 3% at $71.29 on Wednesday ahead of earnings, and the after-hours reaction had shares up another 3.5% at $73.75 in the after-hours reaction.

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