14 DAY TRIAL // The fact that Facebook managed to beat expectations with its latest earnings report should come as no surprise since it’s been doing this for the past couple of years straight.
The social network’s third quarter earnings report reveals that the company brought in $3.203 billion (€2.51 billion) in revenue. The GAAP net income rose to $806 million (€632.7 million), which is a hefty profit.
The company now has 1.35 billion monthly users, which is quite impressive, even though the user growth rate is slowing down some for the world’s biggest social network, something that was to be expected considering that there are some 2.8 billion Internet users in the entire world.
Facebook saw an increase in users everywhere in the world. In the United States and Canada, the company only added a couple million new monthly users, and another four million in Europe. 16 million came from Asia and another 12 million from the rest of the world.
Ad money on the rise
Quite impressively, Facebook also scored 1.12 billion mobile users. They contributed 66 percent of the company’s ad revenue, up from approximately 49 percent in the same quarter of the previous year. Out of the total revenue, advertising accounted for $2.96 billion (€2.32 billion), which is 64 percent over the same quarter of 2013.
This is proof that Facebook is slowly becoming a force to be reckoned with when it comes to mobile advertising, an area where Zuckerberg didn’t even want to place ads in the first place. The company did agree to serve ads in the mobile app after investors started complaining about the issue following the 2012 IPO.
When it comes to the ad money, the bulk of it continues to come from the United States and Canada, which generated $1.362 billion (€1.069 billion), $187 million (€146.8 million) more than in the previous quarter. Users in Europe brought in $789 million (€619.4 million) this quarter, compared to $757 million (€594.2 million) in the second quarter of the year. $469 million (€368.2 million) came from Asia and $343 million from the rest of the world.
“This has been a good quarter with strong results. We continue to focus on serving our community well and continue to invest in connecting the world over the next decade,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO.
Even though the numbers are great, the slowing growth rate is affecting the company quite a bit. In after-hours trading, Facebook’s stock plummeted to $71.98 (€56.5), down from the $80.28 (€63.02) at which the day closed.