Facebook Profit Jumps 90% On Strong Mobile Ad Growth

(RTTNews) - Social networking giant Facebook, Inc. (FB) said Tuesday after the markets closed that its third quarter profit jumped 90% from last year, as revenue surged 59% amid strong growth in mobile advertising.

The company's quarterly earnings per share, excluding items, also came in above analysts' expectations as did its quarterly revenue.

This marks the company's tenth quarterly results since going public through a much hyped IPO in May 2012.

"This has been a good quarter with strong results," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. "We continue to focus on serving our community well and continue to invest in connecting the world over the next decade."

Facebook shares are currently losing 9.03% in after hours trading after closing the day's regular trading session at $80.77, up 49 cents. The shares trade in a 52-week range of $43.55 to $81.16.

Facebook joined the S&P 500 Index on December 20, 2013.

The company's advertising revenue for the third quarter surged 64% year-over-year to $2.96 billion and constituted more than 92.5% of total revenue.

Facebook has now become a big hit with mobile phone users. Facebook's mobile ad revenue represented about 66% of advertising revenue for the third quarter, up from about 62% in the prior quarter and 49% in the prior year quarter.

The company ended the third quarter with 1.35 billion monthly active users, an increase of 14% from a year earlier. Daily active users were 864 million on average for September, up 19% from last year. Mobile monthly active users surged 29% to 1.12 billion at September 30.

For the third quarter ended September 30, 2014, Menlo Park, California-based Facebook reported net income of $806 million or $0.30 per share, compared to $425 million or $0.17 per share for the year-ago quarter.

Excluding items, adjusted net income for the third quarter was $1.15 billion or $0.43 per share, compared to $666 million or $0.27 per share in the prior year quarter.

On average, 40 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to earn $0.40 per share for the third quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Revenue for the third quarter rose 59% to $3.20 billion from $2.02 billion in the same quarter last year. Forty analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $3.12 billion for the third quarter.

Operating margin for the third quarter improved to 44% from 37% a year earlier, while adjusted operating margin increased to 57% from 51% last year.

Earlier this month, Facebook completed its $19 billion acquisition of mobile messaging start-up WhatsApp Inc.