FB Earnings: Facebook Beats Sales Estimates; Shares Rise
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Facebook(NEW YORK) — Facebook (Nasdaq: FB), after its disastrous initial share offer in May, issued its first earnings report as a public company today, topping analyst expectations for sales at $1.184 billion and meeting profit estimates.
“Our goal is to help every person stay connected and every product they use be a great social experience,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, said in a statement. “That’s why we’re so focused on investing in our priorities of mobile, platform and social ads to help people have these experiences with their friends.”
The company’s shares closed Thursday at $26.84, down 8.5 percent and some 26 percent below its offer price back in May. They surged in aftermarket trading to more than $29.
Facebook said profit was 12 cents a share after certain costs including a large payout to insiders from its IPO.
During Facebook’s earnings conference call, which will include comments from Zuckerberg, investor attention will focus on how much the social network made in advertising revenue and whether users are sticking despite cutthroat competition from sites like Twitter and Pinterest.
Zuckerberg’s net worth sunk about $5 billion from a peak of about $19 billion after Facebook went public.
The company reported 955 million monthly active users as of June 30, an increase of 29 percent, year-over-year.
At the end of March 2012, there were 901 million monthly active Facebook users with 526 million daily active users on average.
Before the highly publicized and blundered IPO on May 18, Facebook revealed it made $1.058 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2012, up from $731 billion last year. Its net income had dropped to $205 million from $233 million last year.
Copyright 2012 ABC News Radio