Facebook beats estimates as revenue soars 52% to $5.4bn

Facebook reported a better-than-expected 51.9 per cent rise in quarterly revenue as its increasingly popular mobile app and push into live video continued to attract new advertisers and encouraged existing ones to boost spending.

The company’s shares rose 5.8 per cent to $115.22 in after-hours trading yesterday. It employs more than 1,000 in Ireland.

Mobile ad revenue accounted for about 82 per cent of total ad revenue in the first quarter ended March 31st, compared with about 73 per cent a year earlier.

Facebook said it had 1.65 billion monthly active users as of March 31st, up from 1.44 billion a year earlier.

Facebook’s net income attributable to common shareholders rose to $1.51 billion, or 52 cents per share, in the first quarter from $509 million, or 18 cents per share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, the company earned 77 cents per share. Total revenue rose to $5.38 billion from $3.54 billion, with ad revenue increasing 56.8 percent to $5.20 billion.

Analysts on average had expected a profit of 62 cents per share and revenue of $5.26 billion.

The company also said it planned to create a new class of non-voting capital stock, known as the Class C capital stock.

Facebook said the proposal was designed in part to encourage chief executive Mark Zuckerberg to remain in an "active leadership role" at the company.

If the proposal is approved, the company will issue two shares of Class C capital stock as a one-time stock dividend in respect of each outstanding share of its Class A and Class B common stock.

Facebook has been rolling out new features to ramp up mobile advertising, several of which encourage advertisers to experiment further with video and migrate to the platform from television advertising.

Separately, PayPal said its quarterly revenue rose 19 per cent as the company added customers and processed more digital payments on its network. It employs more than 2,000 in Ireland.

Shares of the payment processor, which was spun off from eBay last year, rose 4 per cent to $41.65 in extended trading yesterday.

– (Reuters)