Facebook profits sore in 2015

Fourth-quarter net income more than doubled to US$1.56 billion, or 54 cents a share, from US$701 million, or 25 cents, a year earlier.

It was also reported that now over 90 percent of daily and monthly active Facebook users now access the site through mobile. “2015 was a great year for Facebook”, CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated. Apart from focusing on mobile, Facebook has been investing in other areas such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and drones to connect the remotest parts of the world to the Internet.

Facebook shares witnessed an increase of almost 12 percent in after-hours trading to $105.32 on Wednesday, after the company recently reported its earnings for the 2015 fourth quarter.

More and more people are engaging on Facebook whenever and wherever they like.

As with previous quarters, mobile advertising represented the bulk of Facebook’s advertising revenue, totaling about 80 percent of all ad revenue.

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.

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 United States election. Facebook is in the initial phase of mining revenue from its trendy Instagram service and video library, which is expanding rapidly.

In the three months ended December 31, Facebook tallied 79 cents per share in profits, after adjustments for things like stock-based compensation. The company has planned to ship first headsets from Oculus, the VR pioneer it acquired for $2 billion in 2014, in March. The results were quite impressive and will go a long way in giving analysts who see Facebook’s years as a growth stock coming to end, a pause.

1 billion daily active users are on mobile devices. And this figure was up more than 50% on a year ago.

Analyst Rob Sanderson of MKM Partners said Facebook’s core business is so strong that many people won’t be scrambling for them to start monetizing other properties anytime soon.

Facebook’s strong quarter contrasted with a disappointing performance by Apple Inc (AAPL.O), which is worth about $519 billion, making it the most valuable USA company.