"There is no argument, Facebook is a mobile phone company," said Zuckerberg investors after the company's fourth-quarter adjusted earnings per share of 17 cents and revenue of 1.59 billion dollars, which was slightly ahead of what Wall Street had expected.
Yes, there is apparently no place like mobile Facebook. The company said it saw monthly active mobile users jump 57 percent year on year to 680 million in the fourth quarter. And its daily active users on mobile eclipse desktop users for the first time in the history of the company.
Facebook also said it generated 23 percent of its advertising revenue in the fourth quarter - or $ 306 million - from a mobile phone. This is double what the company has done over the last quarter and a whopping mobile given that mobile units Facebook ad released just last June.
Lucky Facebook
In the third quarter, Facebook had 604 million people per month using the network on mobile devices. The ever-expanding public has contributed to 14 percent of advertising revenue for the quarter social network, which amounted to approximately $ 152.6 million. The 604 million people also accounted for 61 per cent year on year growth, migration mobile alarmed investors have had Facebook has not proven to monetize members on-the-go eyeballs.
"A couple of quarters ago mobile revenues have zero percent of our revenues ads," Chief Financial Officer David Ebersman said. "Now, we are up to 23 percent and I think a lot of growth ahead of us."
In short, Facebook seems to have little problem monetization attention that users migrate en masse to mobile applications company. The surpise as Zuckerberg said on several occasions, is that Facebook ads vomited in the news feed, without restarting revolt, something most of us probably thought it would be. People hate ads, right?
"One of the major factors [mobile revenues] was that we deployed ads in news feeds, we found that it is hardly affected the level of engagement on Facebook," said Zuckerberg . "We thought we could make this work over time without much impact if we spent a lot of time to develop the ads, but the number turned out even better than we thought setting without much ". Facebook expected distribution of new ads to send people fleeing and think it would be necessary to double down on the quality of the ads. But this does not happen, so the company felt so sure it raises the number of ads it serves. No fine tuning, Facebook has been a slight decline "2 percent" commitment after pumping volume on the ads.
More simply: Facebook lucky with new listings malnutrition, aka "Sponsored Stories," and people have not budged. Histories promoter, COO Sheryl Sandberg called the cornerstone of the strategy Facebook mobile monetization are status updates that brands and advertisers pay to promote more widely within the power of Facebook.
Facebook semi-accidental success of new ads malnutrition, should you believe Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg Ebersman suggests that once the social network actually appears on how to make the ads better - improved targeting and better formats according to Mark Zuckerberg - distribution of new mobile ads will profit much fatter.
A new concern
Investors are not entirely sold. Although the risk of Facebook mobile, which has weighed on the stock for several months after its release in May, seems to be a distant nightmare, there is another problem: Facebook is spent like crazy.
Social network costs and expenses excluding share-based payments were $ 849 million, an increase of 67 percent compared to the same quarter a year ago. Research and development, including the cost of stock-based compensation actions, accounted for 19 percent of spending in the quarter, an increase of 11 percent a year ago. Overall, operating margins decreased to 46 percent in the fourth quarter from 55 percent in the last quarter of 2011 and earnings fell 79 percent.
Hello, shock. Cost shop-till-you-drop gave investors a source of immediate concern and contributed to the volatility of the shares in after-hours trading. The shares are currently down about 3 percent from Wednesday's closing Facebook $ 31.24.
But it gets worse. Zuckerberg has warned that Facebook would whip her credit cards and go on a spending spree and product staff in the coming year. In what amounted to a slap in the face verbal, he says "Facebook expected that costs grow at a faster pace than we expect to grow our sales this year, which means that we do not operate to maximize our profits this year. "
"[Facebook] said with the exception of expenses based compensation will increase by 50 percent [in 2013]. This suggests [Facebook] will increase $ 1.4 billion, "Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter told CNET." [Facebook] is up 28 per cent of income just to keep net income flat. "
This means that Zuckerberg, perhaps feeling emboldened by the early success in the fight against the problem mobile could try the patience of Wall Street for a little longer, as it continues to expand its empire.
