Facebook (FB) beat Wall Street’s expectations in its second earnings report as a public company after the closing bell on Tuesday. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the social networking site to earn $0.11 per share on sales of $1.23 billion. The Menlo Park-based company reported third quarter earnings of $0.12 per share on revenues of $1.62, however, an increase of 32% from $954 million in the third quarter of 2011. Advertising remained the company’s main source of income, totaling 86% of total revenue.
“As proud as I am that a billion people use Facebook each month, I’m also really happy that over 600 million people now share and connect on Facebook every month using mobile devices,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “People who use our mobile products are more engaged, and we believe we can increase engagement even further as we continue to introduce new products and improve our platform. At the same time, we are deeply integrating monetization into our product teams in order to build a stronger, more valuable company.”
More Internet users continue to use the social networking site on a monthly and daily basis. Monthly active users as of September 30th sat at 1.01 billion, representing a 26% year-over-year increase, and daily active users jumped 28% to a 584 million average. Perhaps the most alarming number is the rate at which users are accessing Facebook from mobile devices, though. Mobile usage increased 61% in the past year to total 604 million monthly active users.
Facebook had a big quarter, surpassing 1 billion monthly active users and debuting its first television commercial. In addition, the company released a major overhaul to its mobile iPhone and iPad applications and launched its Facebook Exchange ad service. There have also been a stream of reports claiming Facebook will develop its own smartphone, however Mark Zuckerberg has directly denied these claims.
