The social media giant reported that it earned 79 cents per share on $5.84 billion in revenue in the quarter. The highest estimates on the Street had called for earnings of 75 cents and revenue of $5.67 billion, according to data from Thomson Reuters.
On average, analysts had expected Facebook to report fourth-quarter earnings of about 68 cents a share on $5.37 billion in revenue, according to Thomson Reuters.
“2015 was a great year for Facebook. Our community continued to grow and our business is thriving,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, said in the company’s earnings release.
The company’s fourth-quarter earnings per share rose 46 percent from 54 cents the year-ago period, and its revenue was nearly 52 percent higher than the $3.85 billion it recorded in Q4 2014.
In total for the full year 2015, Facebook said its revenue came in at $17.93 billion — an increase of 44 percent year-over-year.
Facebook also topped estimates for its users, reporting that it saw total monthly active users (MAUs) at about 1.59 billion by the end of the quarter. Wall Street was looking for the social media giant to report total MAUs of about 1.58 billion.
on the advertising revenue, Facebook also beat analysts’ average expectation of $5.15 billion — according to StreetAccount — with a blow-out $5.64 billion in the quarter. Mobile advertising revenue, meanwhile, came in at $4.51 billion, Facebook said, against expectations of $4.09 billion.
Mobile advertising revenue represented about 80 percent of all ad revenue, the company said, compared to about 69 percent in the year-ago period. Ad impressions on mobile, meanwhile, increased 29 percent on a year-over-year basis, Facebook CFO David Wehner said, adding that 2015’s final quarter was the first since Q3 2013 in which total ad impressions increased against the year-ago period.
There are now more than 2.5 million active advertisers working with Facebook, Zuckerberg said on the call.
On the Oculus virtual reality platform, Zuckerberg didn’t mince his words.
“Yes I am happy. I don’t show much joy, but I am happy,” he said. “It’s going to be gaming — for the beginning. That’s the initial market…I think it’s around 250 million people who have Xboxes, Playstations or Wiis. That’s the initial market of folks who we think are going to be most interested in the early VR experiences, especially at some of the higher price points.”
“But the reason why we’re interested in this, as the social company, is that we think this is going to be a new way that people interact,” Zuckerberg explained. “We’re very excited about that: That’s going to be a big area of investment for us, and is ultimately, I think, going to change the way that we communicate, and live and work — in addition to how we play games.”
