Facebook fast approaching 1 billion daily active users on mobile

The company’s total revenue rose to $5.84bn (£4.10bn) from $3.85bn (£2.7bn) a year earlier, with ad revenue increasing 56.8 per cent during the Christmas holiday shopping period, when spending on advertising normally peaks.

The social network is fast approaching one billion daily active users on smartphones and tablets, hitting 935 million in December, up 25% year-over-year.

Mobile remains the sweet spot for Facebook: 1.44 billion accessed Facebook last quarter on mobile devices, a 21% increase.

Facebook said in the last quarter ended December, mobile advertising revenue accounted for almost 80 per cent of the total ad pie, up from 69 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2014. “In 2016 and beyond, we’re going to continue…serving our community, working to bring connectivity to billions of people who’re not yet connected, and building new technologies that give people more ways to express themselves”.

Facebook shares closed at US$109.11 (RM451), putting its market capitalisation at about US$308.6bil (RM1.27tril).

Analysts on average had expected earnings of $0.68 per share and revenue of $5.37bn, according to Capital IQ. “Our community continued to grow and our business is thriving”.

Google is three times larger by revenue compared to Facebook, but the latter is closing that gap as it sells more mobile advertising on its addictive social-networking app. Its Instgram service has now started yielding revenues and the video library is expanding rapidly.

Following Apple’s lead, Facebook reported record profits for the fourth quarter of the year.

The stock price of Facebook (NYSE:FB) surged more than 12% to $105.90 per share during the extended trading on Wednesday, January 27. The social media giant also said it now has 1.04 billion daily active users.

While previously doubt was cast on whether mobile advertising could take over from traditional streams, today Facebook makes the majority of its earnings from mobile revenue.

Sandberg also spoke about expanding Facebook’s capabilities in real-time sharing, such as with its new Sports Stadium service, and how important it could be surrounding the upcoming USA election.

The numbers will probably help justify all of the changes that Facebook has made to its platform a year ago – including the introduction of live video and collages, more tailored notifications, the ability to hide from an ex’s posts and a more powerful search tool.

Surging revenue and profit boosted Facebook shares almost 30 per cent last year, briefly vaulting the 12-year-old company’s market capitalisation above $US300 billion before the recent market pullback.

“It’s much stronger ad growth than we were expecting”, Evercore ISI analyst Ken Sena said.