Facebook beats expectations yet again with $9.3B revenue in Q2

Facebook is upbeat with a strong Q2 2017 earnings report despite slower user growth. The social networking giant generated close to $9.32 billion in revenue during its second quarter, compared to $6.4 billion during the same quarter last year. The company’s net income for the quarter was $3.9 billion, up from $2 billion a year ago.

Analysts had expected $9.2 billion in revenue, and a net profit of $1.13 per share.

Facebook now has over 2 billion monthly active users- 2.006 billion to be precise which grew 3.4 percent from 1.94 billion users last quarter when its growth rate was 4.3 percent. The company had an average of 1.32 billion daily active users in June, up from 1.13 billion a year ago.

Facebook had costs of $4.920 billion and a 47 percent operating margin, compared to Q1’s $3.06 billion in profit and 41 percent operating margin. Headcount reached 20,658, up 43 percent year-over-year.

Mobile revenue, which made up 87 percent of the company’s total revenue, rose 84 percent from the same quarter a year ago. But Facebook had warned of a revenue slowdown as it tries to limit the amount of ads in its users’ feeds. Revenue at the company grew by 49 percent in the first quarter of 2017.

The social network has been making an aggressive push into the video segment and when asked how will that affect expenses, CFO David Wehner said, “Video will continue to be a big focus and area of investment for us.” That increased focus on video could over time also contribute to declining ad growth in Facebook’s core product, Wehner warned. “As people spend more time with video, that is going to have a limiting effect on time spent in the news feed.”

Instagram continued its explosive growth, reaching 700 million users, 375 million users for its Direct messaging feature, and 250 million for its Snapchat Stories clone. Meanwhile, Messenger hit 1.2 billion monthly users.

Facebook’s stock was almost 4.5 percent higher in after-hours trading.