Facebook revenue, profit, user base top expectations

The figures announced by Facebook, led by founder Mark Zuckerberg, show its growth in popularity, with 1.49billion monthly active users as of June 30, up 13% from a year earlier.

The company generated $4.04 billion in revenue in Q2, compared to $2.91 billion during the same quarter a year ago.

In the second quarter of 2015, Facebook’s monthly active user base grew to 1.49 billion, while its daily active user base reached 968 million.

The world’s largest online social network said Wednesday that it had 1.31 billion people visiting from a mobile device at least once a month, on average, during the quarter. Engagement across our family of applications keeps growing, and we remain focused on improving the quality of our services.

On the downside, advertising revenue from the desktop version of the site went down 10%, racking in only $919 million / €840 million.

Mr Zuckerberg said the costs reflected “ongoing investments and improvements” it had made, such as its new data centre in Texas, which had helped reduced crashes on the network. Expenses for the quarter jumped 82% with research and development costs nearly rising by 100%. The company also beat Wall Street’s expectations for its earnings per share by 3 cents with EPS of $0.50. As of 30 June, the number of mobile monthly active users increased 23% year over year to 1.31bn. As of the second quarter, just over three-quarters of its ad sales came from mobile.

Facebook shares fell 5 per cent in after-hours trading after the announcement.

As a result, Facebook on Thursday reported a Q2 profit of $715 million (652.7 million euros), a 9 percent fall over the same period past year.

As image driven marketing on mobile grows, marketers have a pent up desire to build their presence on Instagram, which research firm eMarketer recently forecast will make $595 million in global mobile ad revenue this year and $1.48 billion in 2016.

Excluding items, the company earned 50 cents per share.

Advertising revenue climbed 43 percent to $3.83 billion in the quarter. “Key catalysts such as video ads, Instagram monetization, and off-platform monetization should become more meaningful growth drivers for the company”, Stifel analysts said in a media advisory.

The company’s mobile ad revenue was up 73% year over year, according to COO Sheryl Sandberg, who cited the company’s ongoing efforts to “capitalize on the shift to mobile”, as well as ongoing experimentation with ad formats and mechanisms.