NEW YORK (CNNMoney) ? Facebook?s second earnings report as a public company came in just above Wall Street estimates, but that was enough for investors to give shares a nice boost.
The social network reported sales of nearly $1.3 billion for its third quarter, up 24% from the same period last year.
Facebook?s shares fell 3% just after the announcement, but quickly turned around to rise more than 8% in after-hours trading. Facebook needs every stock boost it can get: Its shares had lost half their value since the company?s May IPO.
Facebook?s earnings for the quarter were complicated by a hefty tax bill related to the company?s equity compensation for employees. The company?s took a $431 million income tax provision for the quarter, representing an eye-popping 116% effective tax rate.
The tax bill pushed Facebook to a net loss of $59 million, compared with a gain of $227 million in the year-ago quarter. Stripping out the tax bill and other equity compensation expenses, Facebook had net earnings of $311 million, slightly ahead of analysts? expectations.
Highlights for the quarter that ended Sept. 30 included a 26% yearly gain in monthly active users, who now number just over 1 billion. Facebook pulled in $1.1 billion serving ads to those users ? up 36% from last year.
Facebook called out a few of its its efforts to monetize its everyday users. In September it unveiled Facebook Gifts, a feature that lets users send friends real, physical goods.
In October ? which isn?t part of the quarter Facebook is currently reporting ? it released a ?Promote? feature to a small group of U.S. users. The experimental program lets Facebookers pay a fee, currently around $7, to promote important pictures or announcements.
A central element of the monetization problem is Facebook?s sluggish transition to a mobile-dominated society. The site wasn?t built with mobile in mind, and the company was slow to develop device-optimized apps. An overhauled iOS app launched in August ? but Facebook still isn?t showing mobile users as many ads as it would if accessed on a desktop.
That?s a missed revenue opportunity. Facebook revealed Tuesday that its mobile customer base rose 61% from last year, to 604 million active users.
Also of concern in Tuesday?s report: It?s getting more expensive for Facebook to do business. Excluding some compensation expenses, Facebook?s operating margin shrank to 42%, down from from 51% a year ago.
Facebook will hold a conference call Tuesday afternoon, during which analysts are likely to ask probing questions about Zynga, the game maker that accounts for a significant portion of Facebook?s sales.
Earlier this month, Zynga scaled back its outlook for 2012, citing a bunch of problems including ?reduced expectations? for certain games and delays in launching new titles.
Problems for Zynga means problems for Facebook. Zynga accounted for 14% of Facebook?s revenue in the first six months of 2012, including payment processing fees, direct advertising, and outside ads shown on pages generated by Zynga apps.
The-CNN-Wire
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Source: http://fox13now.com/2012/10/23/facebook-stock-pops-8-as-ad-sales-surge/
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