Facebook shares surge as profit doubles in final quarter

Facebook shares surged yesterday as profits more than doubled in the final quarter of last year.

In earnings that beat most forecasts, Facebook's net profit came in at $3.7 billion (roughly Rs 24,943 crores) on revenues of $8.6 billion (roughly Rs 57,979 crores) in the fourth quarter, as against a profit of $1.6 billion on $5.6 billion in revenue in the same period a year earlier.

The number of users of the social network increased 17 per cent monthly to 1.86 billion. The ranks of people accessing Facebook from mobile devices each month rose to 1.74 billion, increasing 21 per cent from the same period a year earlier. Daily active users hit 1.23 billion, up 18 per cent year on year, while mobile daily active users rose to 1.149 billion, up 23 per cent year on year.

Revenue from ads on mobile devices accounted for about 84 per cent of the social network's overall advertising revenue in the final quarter of last year.

"We believe concerns over user engagement and other social competitors are likely overblown, as few companies share Facebook's combination of scale, strong technology orientation, and platform breath/diversity," Baird research analyst Colin Sebastian said in a note to investors.

For the first time ever, the most number of daily active users for Facebook were from Asia.

The social network's user base in Asia had increased by 57 per cent over the past two years, which far outpaced growth anywhere else.

According to commentators, the numbers were anything but surprising, as countries like India weregrowth regions for Facebook.

The company which had also taken various steps to ensure users in these countries got the best possible experience.

To overcome the problems due to unreliable network connections, Facebook had launched lite app that was light in terms of storage, and could also work on 2G connections.