Facebook announced $ 1.58 billion in revenue Wednesday for the company’s fourth quarter, beating analyst estimates of $ 1.53 billion. Overall, the company reported $ 5.09 billion in revenue for 2012, compared to $ 3.71 billion for 2011, when the company was not yet public. The company saw fourth-quarter earnings of $ 0.17 per share excluding one-time charges, compared to analyst expectations of earnings of $ 0.15 per share.
Facebook made crucial gains in mobile this quarter, which is important to technologists and analysts alike as they evaluate the health of the company. Facebook saw mobile daily active users exceed web DAU’s for the first time this quarter.
And the company saw a serious uptick in mobile advertising revenue, which made up 23 percent of total advertising revenue in the fourth quarter, compared to 14 percent in the third quarter. Mobile is the name of the game for Facebook, as it was for the last earnings report, as the company has worked to improve the speed of its native apps in 2012 and has focused on monetization through mobile advertising.
The company now has 1.06 billion monthly active users as of Dec. 31, as compared to 1.01 billion as of Sept. 30. The company has 618 million daily active users compared to 584 million on average in September, and mobile MAU’s are at 680 million compared to 604 million as of Sept. 30.
The company recently released Graph Search, which will likely have its own monetization opportunities, and has gone through a holiday season will the full roll-out of its e-commerce “Facebook Gifts” product.
This post will be updated continuously and will include information from the earnings call set for 2 p.m. PST.
Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.
- Facebook’s IPO filing: ideas and implications
- Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
- Flash analysis: the future of Yahoo
 |
 |