Facebook Sees Strong Quarter Fuelled By Mobile Ads

Facebook has posted its second-best fiscal quarter as a public company, thanks to strong growth from mobile advertising.

This meant that its Q1 2013 earnings were generally on target with Wall Street projections.

Facebook Financials

The social network giant posted a solid 7 percent rise in profits to $219 million (£141m), compared with $205m (£132m) in the year ago period.

Revenues meanwhile rose by 38 percent to $1.46 billion (£938m) in the first three months of 2013, compared with $1 billion (£680m) in the year ago quarter. This was still down on the $1.585 billion (£1.02bn) it made in Q4 2012

Facebook banked earnings per share of 12 cents (£0.07).

Wall Street analysts had predicted revenue of $1.44 billion (£926m) and 13 cents (£0.08) per share, so Facebook exceeded the first figure and missed the second by a penny.

The company’s newly revamped mobile advertising accounted for some 30 percent – or about $375 million (£241m) – of its ad revenue for the quarter. Total revenue from advertising came out to $1.25 billion (£804m), or 85 percent of total revenue.

Analysts were expecting about $1.25 billion in total advertising revenue with 27 percent ($340 million/£219m) coming from mobile advertising.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in the first few months of the year,” CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. “We have seen strong growth and engagement across our community and launched several exciting products.”

User Activity

Facebook’s official charts showing monthly and daily active users presented a picture of steady growth, despite concerns of growing ‘Facebook fatigue’ among its user base.

The company reported that it had 1.11 billion monthly active users as of 31 March, 2013, up from 680 million two years ago.

Facebook increased its daily active users to 665 million people – an increase of 26 percent year over year. The company is seeing its greatest growth in the mobile user area. Zuckerberg said Facebook had 751 million monthly mobile active users by 31 March, which is a 54 percent year-over-year upsurge.

The company also had a busy quarter with the arrival of new products, after it launched both its Graph Search and Facebook Home app for Android devices.

Shares in Facebook closed Wednesday at $27.43 (£17.64) per share, still below its 18 May, 2012, IPO starting price of $30 (£19.29).

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