In its earnings report, the company said its daily active users (DAUs) were 1.09 billion on average for March 2016, an increase of 16% year-over-year. Facebook will issue two of the so-called “Class C” shares for each outstanding Class A and Class B share held by shareholders.
Advertisement
The report shows Facebook is using its dominant position in social media to boost advertising revenues as it connects more people with new services such as live video.
“Facebook still has many growth levers left to pull, not least of which is video advertising”, wrote Mark Mahaney, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets.
Facebook posted adjusted earnings of $.77 per share on revenue of roughly $5.38 billion for the quarter. “They’re an impressive company, and they leave very little room for criticism”, said Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter, who called the operating margin a good surprise.
Facebook is taking steps to ensure that founder Mark Zuckerberg stays connected and in control at the social network even as he pursues other goals related to charity and research. Mobile daily active users were 989m for March 2016.Facebook doesn’t break out this number in its earnings release, but we watch for it every quarter.
Quarterly revenue jumped 52 percent, while net income tripled to $1.5 billion (1.32 billion euros). Most investors are likely to approve Mr. Zuckerberg’s tight control of the firm if he can keep delivering excellent financial results.
Facebook has not begun advertising on some of its most popular apps.
$5.382 billion in total revenue during the quarter, a 51.9% increase from $3.543 billion in the same quarter of 2014.
In fact, Facebook’s earnings per share figure was 10% better than the highest estimate of 41 Wall Street analysts.
To put these numbers into perspective, Facebook’s Messenger now has over 900 million users, while Instagram has over 400 million. Mobile ad revenue made up about 82% of total ad revenue, an increase from 73% in the year-ago quarter.
Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, announced past year that they would give away 99 percent of their Facebook shares to fund charitable endeavors.
Advertisement
Zuckerberg said he wanted to “preserve founder-led structure” so he could stay in control of the company.
