Facebook’s earnings beat projections for the 8th quarter straight with $2.91B in revenue and $0.42EPS in Q2 2014. The service is growing about twice as fast on mobile compared to its services as a whole. Facebook now has 1.07 billion mobile monthly users, and 654 million daily mobile users. That helped it bring in 62% of its ad revenue from mobile. In total, Facebook now has 1.32 billion monthly users and 829 million daily users, or 63% of users returning each day. It beat Wall Street’s estimates of $2.81 billion in revenue and $0.32 EPS.
Wall Street responded positively to the earnings release, pushing $FB up 5.25% in after-hours trading to what would be an all-time high above $75.
Compared to Q1 2014, Facebook’s total user count is up 3.125% from 1.28 billion total monthly users to 1.32 billion, and total daily user count is up 3.36% from 802 million to 829 million. Monthly mobile user count is up 5.9% from 1.01 billion to 1.07 billion, and daily mobile user count is up 7.4% from 609 million to 654 million.
Facebook picked up a little steam in terms of growth in its home market, with the USA and Canada region growing by 2 million monthly users, opposed to 1 million users in Q1. That could quiet critics saying Facebook is falling out of favor with Western users. It now has 391 million mobile-only users, which dwarfs its 240 million desktop-only users, showing Facebook is transitioning well into the mobile age and has its teeth sunk into mobile-first emerging markets around the world.
Facebook hit an all-time high average revenue per user in every region around the world this quarter. Ad revenue per user was up in all geographies too, which is strong considering the US and Canada market saw steep decline from Q4 2012 to Q1 2013.
Meanwhile, one dark corner of its earnings report was payments revenue, which is largely derived from its web games platform where it earns a 30% tax on in-app purchases. Total payments revenue was down slightly to $234 million from $237 million in Q1, though it’s still up 9% compared to Q2 2013. The fall was largely driven by reduced payments in the US and Canada region, where smartphone users have largely moved their casual and mid-core gaming to mobile platforms like iOS and Android where Facebook doesn’t get a cut.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg dryly remarked in the earnings release that “We had a good second quarter. Our community has continued to grow, and we see a lot of opportunity ahead as we connect the rest of the world.”
Facebook’s share price came into earnings today just $1.30 share its all-time high. This quarter has seen a lot of Facebook news on the business front, in particular the launch of Facebook Audience Network, its mobile ad network that will let it earn money by applying its targeting to ads in other companies’ apps. However, that product is still spinning up and probably didn’t contribute meaningful revenue this quarter.
Facebook also gave another shot at competing with Snapchat with the launch of standalone app Slingshot, a photo and video messaging app where to unlock and see shots sent to you by friends, you have to reply with your own content first.
In the earnings call this afternoon, I hope to see Facebook voluntarily discuss teen engagement levels, or at least hear an analyst ask about them. Last time Facebook mentioned a slight dip amongst young US teenagers, its share price plummeted.
[Update 3pm PST: During the earnings call today, Zuckerberg said that Messenger and payments would eventually overlap, but that Facebook will take its time with monetizing its standalone chat app. Zuckerberg also noted that American Facebook users now spend an average of 40 minutes per day on the service, but the company has plenty of room to grow that since Americans spend 9 hours per day on digital media.]
