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Facebook is beginning to reach its financial stride, reporting much-improved second-quarter revenue and profit July 24 and soundly out-flanking Wall Street analysts’ projections.
The Menlo Park, Calif.-based social network recorded profit for the last three months of $333 million, or 13 cents per share. Revenue grew an impressive 53 percent to $1.8 billion, year over year.
Wall Street analysts polled by Thomson Reuters believed the company would report earnings of 14 cents a share on revenues of $1.62 billion.
The news boosted the stock price up 17 percent in after-hours trading to $30.95, finally surpassing its IPO start price of $30. The stock had closed at $26.51.
On the earnings call, the company said 699 million people visit the Website each day, that 469 million users visit its mobile app. Overall, some 1.15 billion people globally visit each month; 819 million of those are on mobile devices, Facebook said.
The bottom line here is that Facebook’s mobile advertising strategy–long a point of contention with shareholders–is now showing up as gains on the bottom line. Mobile ad revenue is rising fast; of Facebook’s total advertising revenue, 41 percent came from mobile–up 11 percent from the previous quarter.
The company also has had a busy half-year with new products, launching both its Graph Search and Facebook Home app for Android devices.
“We’ve made good progress growing our community, deepening engagement and delivering strong financial results, especially on mobile,” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.
“The work we’ve done to make mobile the best Facebook experience is showing good results and provides us with a solid foundation for the future.”