Facebook crushes expectations, stock soars

Jillian D'Onfro
Updated
Facebook's fantastic quarter
Facebook's fantastic quarter

Facebook just reported its Q1 earnings!

The company beat on both the top and bottom line and the stock surged ~8% after-hours.

Here are the most important numbers:

  • Earnings per share: $0.77 versus $0.62 expected

  • Revenue: $5.38 billion versus $5.25 billion expected and up 57% year-over-year

  • Monthly active users: 1.65 billion versus 1.62 billion expected

  • Daily active users: 1.09 billion on average for March 2016. This quarter, 66% of Facebook's monthly active users were daily active users, which is up from 65% during the same period last year

Along with strong growth across the board on those key numbers, Facebook also once again proved that its mobile business is thriving. It had 1.51 billion mobile MAUs, up 21% year-over-year, and the company made 82% of its advertising revenue from mobile this quarter (versus 73% at this time last year).

There are 894 million monthly active users who only check Facebook on their smartphones.

Outside of ad revenues, Facebook makes a small amount of money from payments and other fees: $181 million this quarter, which is down 20% year-over-year (the company has previously attributed this decline to a drop in revenue from gaming apps).

See photos of Facebook through the years:

The company is also proposing a new class of non-voting stock to make sure that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg retains majority control:

"If the proposal is approved, we intend to issue two shares of Class C capital stock as a one-time stock dividend in respect of each outstanding share of our Class A and Class B common stock. This proposal is designed to create a capital structure that will, among other things, allow us to remain focused on Mr. Zuckerberg's long-term vision for our company and encourage Mr. Zuckerberg to remain in an active leadership role at Facebook."

Here are the other important numbers:

  • Total costs and expenses were $3.37 billion, up 29% year-over-year and capital expenditures were $1.13 billion.

  • Free cash flow for the first quarter of 2016 was $1.85 billion

  • Most of Facebook's revenue comes from North America and Europe with only about 24% ($1.3 billion) coming from Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world. But those areas account for 66% of its monthly active users. The average revenue per user in those regions is still tiny, compared to in the US — $1.56 and $0.91, respectively, vs. $12.43 and $3.98 in the US and Europe.

Here's a look at where Facebook's revenue comes from geographically:

FB chart
FB chart

Photo via Getty

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See Also:
You could start seeing ads in Facebook Messenger based on the websites you visit
All the crazy-ambitious products Facebook's working on besides its social network
Facebook's latest attempt to make people share more could be another camera app

SEE MORE: You could start ads in Facebook Messenger based on the websites you visit

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