Facebook today posted per-share earnings in the fourth quarter of 54 cents on revenue of $3.9 billion, exceeding the expectations of analysts on the top and bottom line.
Wall Street had predicted that Facebook would report earnings of 48 cents per share on revenue of $3.8 billion. In the same quarter a year ago, the giant social-network company earned 38 cents per share on $2.6 billion in revenue.
The stock rose 1 percent on Wednesday but an additional 2 percent in the after-hours session after the company’s quarterly results were announced.
For all of 2014, Facebook posted $12.5 billion in revenue, up 58 percent over 2013 and the first year it has exceeded $10 billion.
In December, daily active users amounted to 890 million, up 18 percent compared to the same month a year ago. Mobile daily active users, though, surged 34 percent to 745 million in December.
The bulk of Facebook’s revenue in the quarter — nearly $3.6 billion — came from advertising, and mobile advertising represented 69 percent of that, up from 53 percent a year ago.
“Our community continues to grow and we’re making progress towards connecting the world,” said founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
Like some other companies have mentioned recently, Facebook’s results were harmed a bit from a strong U.S. dollar. Facebook’s revenue rose 49 percent but it could have risen 53 percent if not for the impact of foreign exchange rates.
On Wednesday after earnings were released, COO Sheryl Sandberg told CNBC that Facebook features 3 billion video views per day, up from 1 billion just four months ago
