Facebook Tops Targets, Stock Surges on Strong Q4 Results

Facebookreported better-than-expected Q4 results this afternoon, setting off an 8% surge at one point during late trading.

Both sales and earnings came in ahead of Wall Street's fourth-quarter targets. Revenue soared 63% to $2.59 billion while per-share profit zoomed 82% to $0.31. Analysts had been calling for $2.33 billion and $0.27, respectively, according to data compiled by Yahoo! Finance.

For the full year, revenue improved 55% to $7.87 billion. Adjusted profits grew 66% to $0.88 a share. Both figures handily beat the consensus -- $7.64 billion and $0.84, respectively -- as cash flow soared. Facebook's cash from operations more than doubled in 2013.

Costs also rose but at a much slower pace. Operating margins expanded 10 percentage points year-over-year as a result.

"It was a great end to the year for Facebook," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, said in a statement. "We're looking forward to our next decade and to helping connect the rest of the world."

Importantly, at 53% mobile ads now account for the majority of Facebook's revenue. That's up from 49% in Q3 and 23% in the fourth quarter of 2012. Mobile daily active users also jumped 49% year-over-year to 556 million in December. Overall, Facebook now counts 1.23 billion monthly active users of its sites.

The article Facebook Tops Targets, Stock Surges on Strong Q4 Results originally appeared on Fool.com.

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