Facebook's flawless earnings embarrass Twitter once again
In this March 25, 2015, file photo, Mark Zuckerberg talks about the Messenger app during the Facebook F8 Developer Conference in San Francisco.
Image: Eric Risberg/Associated Press
By Seth Fiegerman 2016-01-27 21:21:05 UTC
Mark Zuckerberg is kicking off his return from paternity leave on a positive note.
Facebook revenue surged to $5.8 billion in the all-important holiday quarter of 2015, shattering Wall Street estimates and far surpassing the $3.6 billion it generated a year earlier. That rise was fueled by the relentless growth of its users and advertising on smaller smartphone and tablet screens.
The social network is fast approaching one billion daily active users on smartphones and tablets, hitting 935 million in December, up 25% year-over-year. Where the users go, so go the ad dollars.
Mobile advertising, once thought to be Facebook's Achilles heel, now accounts for a staggering 80% of the company's overall advertising revenue — up from effectively nothing at the time of Facebook's much-watched public offering in 2012.
For the year as a whole, Facebook sales hit nearly $18 billion, up from around $12 billion in the year prior.
The overwhelmingly positive results come in stark contrast to social media rival Twitter, which has been plagued by stalled user growth, significant executive turmoil and a fast-declining stock.
Zuckerberg did not mention Twitter by name, but the comparisons were obvious. On a conference call with analysts, the CEO noted that Facebook added 200 million monthly active users throughout 2015, reaching 1.59 billion overall. Twitter has just around 300 million users. Total.
Zuckerberg gets personal
After taking a victory lap on behalf of Facebook on the call, Zuckerberg, who just returned to work this week after a two-month paternity leave, deviated from the hard numbers for a moment to get "personal" about the birth of his first child, Max.
"On a more personal note," Zuckerberg told investors, the birth of his daughter has caused him to "reflect a lot on the legacy we want to leave to the next generation. We can leave a better world to the next generation."
Zuckerberg has already been working on that legacy inside and outside Facebook: pledging to give away nearly all of his vast fortune to improve the world while simultaneously leading by example in taking a generous and high-profile paternity leave.
The true unicorn in Silicon Valley: a tech stock investors like
Facebook, like most of publicly traded Silicon Valley darlings, has seen its once soaring stock dragged down in recent weeks amid a global market selloff that has caused Wall Street investors to re-think their appetite for high-growth, high-risk tech companies.
Wall Street had expected Facebook to report a profit of $0.68 per share on revenue of $5.37 billion for the quarter, according to a survey of analysts conducted by Thomson Reuters. But the company handily beat those estimates, sending the stock up wildly — a rare sight these days in Silicon Valley and beyond.
As of publication, Facebook stock was up more than 10% in after hours trading.
FB data by YCharts
Topics: Business, company news, Facebook, mark zuckerberg, stocks