Zuckerberg Surprise: Growing Facebook Margins, Making Mobile Work

The social media giant said that revenue rose by 63% to $2.59 billion in the last quarter. Adjusted income for the fourth quarter of 2013 was up 98% from the prior year to some $1.46 billion, bringing the number to $0.31 per share. Thomson Reuters was calling for 0.27 in adjusted earnings per share on $2.33 billion in revenue.

Facebook’s margins are growing. Operating margin came to a whopping 44% even on a GAAP basis, up from 33% the prior year’s fourth quarter. Its adjusted operating margin was 56% for the fourth quarter of 2013 versus 46% the year earlier. Facebook even ended with $11.45 billion in cash and equivalents at the end of the year.

Revenue from advertising was $2.34 billion in the fourth quarter, up 76%. Mobile advertising revenue rose to 53% of advertising revenue for the fourth quarter, up from approximately 23% of advertising revenue the prior year.

Facebook said that its payments and other fees revenue was $241 million for the fourth quarter, and its adjusted costs and expenses were up 33% to $1.13 billion in the fourth quarter.

Daily active users were up 22% to 757 million on average for December 2013, while Mobile  daily active users were up 49% to 556 million on average for December 2013. Monthly active users were up 16% to 1.23 billion as of December 31, while mobile monthly average users were up 39% to 945 million as of December 31.

The long and short of the matter is that Facebook is growing margins and still growing its user base enough to please shareholders. Maybe not being popular with teens just doesn’t matter. Facebook shares closed down 2.9% at $53.53 going into earnings, but shares were up 6% to $57.09 in the after-hours reaction.