Anyone who bought stock in Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) immediately after it released its earnings got a momentary 14% return. A few minutes later, that return evaporated, and the gain became a loss. The action in Facebook’s shares after hours fairly raises the issue of whether public companies should put all important and material information about what happened during their most recent quarter into earnings releases, or whether they can save some of them for the earnings calls, which often come minutes or even hours later.

Facebook reported that revenue rose to $2 billion from $1.3 billion in the same period the year before. Net income was $425 million, compared to a loss of $59 million. The financial results were not all that lifted investor sentiment. Facebook’s key operational statistics were extraordinary:

•Daily active users (DAUs) were 728 million on average for September 2013, an increase of 25% year-over-year.
•Monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.19 billion as of September 30, 2013, an increase of 18% year-over-year.
•Mobile MAUs were 874 million as of September 30, 2013, an increase of 45% year-over-year.
•Mobile DAUs were 507 million on average for September 2013.

The only comment the company management had about the figures was unabashedly positive:

“For nearly ten years, Facebook has been on a mission to connect the world,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “The strong results we achieved this quarter show that we’re prepared for the next phase of our company, as we work to bring the next five billion people online and into the knowledge economy.”

On the earnings call, CFO David Ebersman remarked that “We did see a decrease in daily users partly among younger teens. This is of questionable significance.” The news was not of questionable significance to investors, who immediately sold off the stock. Then Ebersman said Facebook would not increase the number of ads it puts into member newsfeeds. There is a risk, apparently, of alienating some of Facebook’s 1.2 billion members if those feeds are overloaded. Facebook shares dropped again. By the end of the call, the stock was down a fraction.

A good deal of what goes into earnings calls is scripted, and much is a review of data already in the earnings release. Facebook management was well aware that at least two pieces of information they had would trouble investors. But they held onto them and sprung them on investors later, maybe because questions asked on the call gave them little choice.

Facebook should have mentioned the “teen user” and “newsfeed ad problem” in its earnings release. Because it did not, some portion of investors lost a great deal of money.

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