1 Billion A Month? That’s Even Better As Facebook Beats Market Expectations Again

Facebook passed the $1 billion a month in revenue barrier in the third quarter, reporting $3.2 billion for the three months ending in September and beating Wall Street expectations for the 10th consecutive quarter.

The great majority of that revenue came from advertising, with the company reporting $2.96 billion in ad revenue, a 64% increase from the third quarter last year and a 10.4% increase over last quarter’s $2.68 billion. Mobile ad revenue made up 66% of the total; last year at this time it was 49%.

The company also reported earnings per share of 43 cents, beating stock analysts’ expectations of 40 cents. Analysts had expected the company to report $3.1 billion in revenue.

Facebook stock, which closed at $80.77, was holding steady in early after-hours trading, down less than one percent when this post was published.

“This has been a good quarter with strong results,” Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a release. “We continue to focus on serving our community well and continue to invest in connecting the world over the next decade.”

Facebook pushed its world-leading user total to 1.35 billion monthly active users, but growth slowed slightly compared to the second-quarter numbers. Facebook added users at 2.27% rate last quarter, compared to 3.12% in Q2. The company has 1.12 billion mobile users, including 456 million who only sign in to the network on mobile devices, 864 million daily active users and 703 million mobile daily active users.

Daily active users increased 4.2% over the second quarter, which, as the Wall Street Journal noted in its live blog, is the highest jump since the second quarter of 2013.

Facebook executives will field analysts’ questions in a conference call at 5 p.m. Eastern today. You can listen to a live stream here.

Postscript: After Facebook gave guidance to expect higher expenses and slower revenue growth in the fourth quarter, the company’s stock dropped sharply in after-hours trading. CFO Dave Wehner said expenses have increased, partly because of a large reduction in the value of the euro, and that revenue for Q4 was expected to increase between 40% and 47% YoT, a significant drop from this quarter’s 59% gain.

Wehner attributed the expected slower growth to the fact that the fourth quarter of 2013 was especially strong for Facebook with the introduction of News Feed ads being a strong driver of revenue. Investors were apparently not convinced; the stock quickly falling 10% during the latter half of the hour-long call.

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