Facebook beats Q2 expectations with solid growth in mobile ad revenue
Facebook published its second quarter financial results on Wednesday, beating market expectations.
The social media giant posted diluted earnings per share of $1.32 on revenue of $9.32 billion.
Wall Street was looking for earnings of $1.13 per share on revenue of $9.2 billion.
Advertising revenue came to $9.16 billion for Q2, up 47 percent year-over-year.
By comparison, Alphabet announced earlier in the week that Google -- Facebook's main ad competitor -- pulled in $22.7 billion in advertising revenue in Q2, an 18 percent year-over-year increase.
Mobile advertising revenue continues to account for a growing share of Facebook's overall sales. Mobile ad revenue accounted for 87 percent of advertising revenue for the second quarter of 2017, up from about 84 percent of advertising revenue in Q2 2016.
"We had a good second quarter and first half of the year," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. "Our community is now two billion people and we're focusing on bringing the world closer together."
Facebook's tally of regular users continues to tick up: Daily active users (DAUs) came to 1.32 billion on average for June 2017, an increase of 17 percent year-over-year. Monthly active users (MAUs) were 2.01 billion as of June 30, 2017, also a 17 percent increase. Facebook announced crossing the 2 billion mark last month.
Zuckerberg said on a conference call Wednesday that more than 250 million people are now using WhatsApp Stories daily, while 250 million are using Instagram Stories daily.
Facebook is looking to keep growing its newer revenue streams from platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram. While WhatsApp has 1 billion daily active users, the company is still working to"build a business ecosystem" on the messaging platform, Zuckerberg said. However, it's "still early on the monetization side" for WhatsApp.
Capital expenditures for the Q2 were $1.44 billion. Expenses could grow as Facebook continues to invest in areas like video. "Video will continue to be a big focus and area of investment for us," Zuckerberg said Wednesday.
As part of its efforts to take a "video first" approach on its social network, Facebook last year started investing more in original video content. According to Bloomberg, the company will debut Facebook TV in August, with original content at a quality level somewhere between what's produced by Netflix and YouTube. Facebook will pay for the content, and it will all include ads. Meanwhile, earlier this week Facebook confirmed it's acquired the intellectual property (IP) management firm Source3 to help content creators protect their IP.
Zuckerberg also said to expect "ongoing aggressive investment" in areas like data centers and technologies that contribute to its long-term goals, such as its internet-delivery drone Aquila.