Facebook flexes mobile ad muscles in Q3 with better than expected revenue of $3.2B

Facebook today reported its fiscal third-quarter earnings for 2014, with revenue of $3.2 billion on non-GAAP earnings per share (EPS) of $0.43. These figures beat analyst expectations of $3.12 billion in revenue and $0.40 EPS.

Year over year, Facebook’s revenue is up by 58 percent; in 2013, the company reported $2.02 billion in revenue and GAAP $0.17 ($0.25 non-GAAP) EPS for the third quarter. Last quarter, Facebook posted revenue of $2.91 billion and $0.30 EPS, up 61 percent from a year ago.

The figures above, however, won’t shape investor sentiment on their own. Mobile ad revenue and user base growth rates are far too important.

This quarter, Facebook says its ad revenue grew 64 percent year over year to $2.96 billion. Of Facebook’s total ad revenue, the company says 66 percent derived from mobile.

In the previous quarter, Facebook’s ad revenue grew 67 percent year over year to $2.68 billion. Also during Q2 2014, Facebook’s mobile ad revenue grew to represent 62 percent of total ad revenue, up from 41 percent a year ago.

In regular trading, Facebook’s stock price was up by less than one percent. After the bell, when this story was published, Facebook was down by less than one percent.

And with that, let’s end this piece on an interesting note: Facebook passed 1.35 billion monthly active users and 864 million daily active users this quarter, a third of which are now mobile-only users. Fancy!

In after hours trading, however, Facebook face-planted — the stock dropped over 9 percent. This could be because the company’s newest acquisition WhatsApp had a net loss of $138 million. In the earnings call CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company’s expenses would increase in quarter four and into 2015 as Facebook continues to invest in the development of its acquisitions like WhatsApp and Oculus Rift.