“It’s phenomenal at these (currency headwind) levels that they’re accelerating to that level of growth”, said Rob Sanderson, an analyst at MKM Partners. Mobile ad revenue comprised 80% of all advertising revenue in the fourth quarter, as Facebook continues to execute impeccably on the mobile front. Revenue in the quarter that ended on December 31 rose to US$5.84 billion from US$3.85 billion the prior year.
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Excluding some items, the company earned 79 cents per share.
“Our community continued to grow and our business is thriving”, said Facebook co-founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg in releasing quarterly results for the world’s biggest social network which comfortably exceeded expectations.
Apart from its focus on mobile, the California-based firm has been ramping up investment in projects such as virtual reality, artificial intelligence and drones to connect the remotest parts of the world to the internet. (When compared to the same quarter in 2014, ad revenue increased by a whopping 57%).
Facebook-owned Oculus this month began taking orders for much-hyped Rift virtual reality head gear, set to begin shipping later this year.
Facebook has been helped by new advertising formats and an improved mobile app, drawing a surge in video views that has attracted greater advertising spending. The number of monthly active users in December was 1.59 billion, in a 14 per cent climb from a year earlier, according to the social network. Both top- and bottom-line results utterly crushed the consensus estimates of $5.4 billion in sales and $0.68 per share in adjusted earnings.
Just over one billion of those use Facebook every day, and 934 million of those access the site on a mobile device, a crucial market as smartphones and tablets begin to dominate time spent online.
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Up to Wednesday’s close at $94.45, Facebook’s stock had risen almost 25 percent in the past 12 months.
