Key Expectations for Facebook Earnings, Buyouts and Guidance (Updated)

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) is set to report its second-quarter earnings after the close of trading on Wednesday. Mark Zuckerberg and team are expected to report earnings of $0.32 per share (up from $0.19 a year ago) and a 55% jump in revenues to $2.81 billion, according to Thomson Reuters.

The driving force likely will again be how well Facebook is monetizing mobile and how well its own advertorial ads and newsfeed are performing. The stock has held up rather well, considering that Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen spooked investors about excessive valuations appearing in some areas around social media.

So, how is the social media giant valued? Facebook trades at 48 times expected 2014 earnings and trades at 38 times expected 2015 earnings. Facebook’s non-GAAP operating margin was 55% for the first quarter of 2014, versus 39% for the first quarter of 2013. Facebook ended last quarter with cash and marketable securities of $12.63 billion, after generating free cash flow of $922 million in the quarter.

UPDATE 11:10 a.m. Eastern: With Facebook shares having climbed back above $70 ahead of earnings, the Facebook consensus price target objective from Thomson Reuters was $78.09 on last look. In a broader Internet coverage initiation that was generally very cautious on the sector, Barclays did start Facebook shares with an Overweight rating and a $78 price target when shares were at $67.44 at the prior close.

Update 2:30 p.m. Eastern: WhisperNumber.com sent us their ‘earnings whisper’ for Facebook – at $0.33 EPS, just one-cent ahead of the consensus estimate and showing some confidence from investors. Whisper numbers are also said to range from a low of $0.29 EPS to a high of $0.39 EPS. Their commentary said,

“Facebook has a 63% positive surprise history (having topped the whisper in 5 of the 8 earnings reports for which we have data). Facebook has met or topped the whisper number in all 8 earnings reports since going public. Facebook has topped the whisper by an average of 1.9c in past eight quarters, and 3.3 cents in past four quarters.”

Here is what Facebook showed for its own internal measurement metrics (year-over-year performance) for the first quarter when it reported earnings back in April:

• Daily active users (DAUs) were 802 million on average for March 2014, up 21%.
• Mobile DAUs were 609 million on average for March 2014, up 43%.
• Monthly active users (MAUs) were 1.28 billion as of March 31, 2014, up 15%.
• Mobile MAUs were 1.01 billion as of March 31, 2014, up 34%.

The first quarter’s revenue jumped 72% to $2.5 billion, broken down as follows:

• Advertising revenue was up 82% to $2.27 billion.
• Mobile ad revenue was 59% of all ad revenue, up from only 30% of all ad revenue a year earlier.
• Payments and other fee revenue was $237 million.

With a CFO transition still taking place and with acquisitions of WhatsApp, Oculus VR, LiveRail and ProtoGeo all having been announced since the start of 2014, it is very possible that Facebook continues to talk up a “building for the future” story rather than one with any detailed financial guidance.

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