Facebook (FB) Earnings Q2 2013: Earnings Beat Wall Street Expectations, Shares Increase 20%

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) reported its fiscal second quarter earnings Wednesday afternoon after markets closed. The company said it beat forecasts and earned more than Wall Street analysts had predicted. It posted $0.13 earnings per share on $1.81 billion in revenue, a significant increase from the $0.09 EPS on $1.62 billion in revenue that analysts polled by Reuters had expected.

Facebook’s revenue increased 53 percent compared to the same period a year ago, when it lost $0.08 EPS on $1.18 billion in revenue.

As expected, mobile growth was a major focus of the report.

“We’ve made good progress growing our community, deepening engagement and delivering strong financial results, especially on mobile,” Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, said in a press release.

On a conference call discussing the the Q2 2013 results, Zuckerberg said there are now 469 million daily users accessing Facebook on mobile devices, up from 425 million in Q1 and 293 million in the year-ago period; 219 monthly active users only access Facebook through their mobile device.

“The work we’ve done to make mobile the best Facebook experience is showing good results and provides us with a solid foundation for the future,” Zuckerberg said.

Overall, Facebook added 45 million monthly active users across all countries and demographics. Sixty-one percent of those users are also daily users, and Zuckerberg said that ratio continues to increase.

People are also spending more time on Facebook. In June, an average of 20 billion minutes were spent on Facebook every day.

All of this is great news for advertisers, which provides Facebook with its primary revenue stream. Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s COO, said advertising grew 61 percent to $1.6 billion. Mobile ad revenue is now 41 percent of total ad revenue, up 11 percent from Q1.

Facebook also added video to Instagram, and more than 130 million active users are uploading hours of video every minute. In the conference call, Facebook said it will look to Instagram as a place to grow profits in the future.