Facebook’s half year profit shoots up 189 percent

During a second-quarter earnings call with analysts on Wednesday, Zuckerberg argued that users’ news feeds on Facebook are more diverse than traditional media, Business Insider reports, citing a transcript of the call.

NEW YORK – Boeing, absorbing billions in write-downs related to two of its newest commercial jets and a military fuel tanker, reported its first quarterly loss in almost seven years.

Putting its rivals to shame, Facebook on Wednesday said second-quarter profit almost tripled to $2.06 billion, while sales were up 59% to $6.44 billion.

Facebook’s stock has jumped 31 percent in the past year.

Facebook also added 60 million new users, bringing its total to 1.71 billion users, compared to analyst predictions of 1.69 billion. The region “has been a consistently good performer for us over the last several quarters and we will continue to invest our global sales resources to drive opportunities there”, Wehner said in an interview with Reuters.

On Oculus, Facebook says more than 1 million people a month are on the platform thank to the Gear VR, in which Oculus Rift has partnered with Samsung.

With over 1.71 billion monthly users to date, a hike from 1.65 billion in the previous quarter, Facebook now makes 84 percent of its advertising revenue from mobile.

Since Facebook went public four years ago, the company’s stock price has more than tripled. Analysts predicted earnings of 81 cents per share and $6 billion in revenue.

Mobile DAUs stood at 1.03 billion on an average for June 2016, an increase of 22.4% year-over-year. It also hit a significant mobile milestone, with 1bn daily users on smartphones and tablets. Moreover, it can be observed from the statistics that Facebook has been steadily growing these numbers from quarter to quarter as well.

“We have five billion people left to connect”, Zuckerberg said.

Excluding items, Facebook earned 97 U.S. cents per share for the second quarter ended June 30.

The research firm eMarketer estimates Facebook is taking in two-thirds of social media ad revenues, trouncing rivals such as Twitter, which this week reported disappointing results. “We’re much more interested in short-form content”, Sandberg said.

Facebook said earlier this month it was ramping up availability of its Oculus virtual reality gear.