A very “likeable” second quarter
For its second quarter, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s adjusted earnings rose 58% to $0.19 per share and topped the consensus estimate by five cents. Revenue rose 53% to $1.81 billion, also exceeding the $1.62 billion that analysts had expected.
Most of those gains were attributed to Zuckerberg’s heavy investments in mobile advertising last year. Those enhancements boosted the company’s mobile revenue 61% year-on-year to $655.6 million, and mobile now accounts for 41% of the company’s total advertising revenue.
At this rate, mobile revenue will soon comprise over half of Facebook’s advertising revenue, which will keep the company on track to claim 14.9% of the global mobile advertising market by the end of fiscal 2013, up from 5.4% in 2012, according to research firm eMarketer. Although that would be an impressive year-on-year gain, Facebook will still trail Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG), which is forecast to claim 52% of the market this year.
Total users and micro-transactions rise
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s total users rose to 1.15 billion, up from 1.11 billion a year ago. Its mobile user base grew 51% year-on-year to 819 million, thanks to the rising adoption of smartphones and tablets. In addition, 61% of its total users accessed the social network daily, even when the company itself had predicted that its number of daily users would eventually flatten out or decline.
Last but not least, revenue from online payments from virtual goods and gifts rose 11% to $214 million, thanks to the popularity of Zynga Inc (NASDAQ:ZNGA)’s Farmville 2 and King’s Candy Crush Saga. Facebook takes a 30% cut of transactions from games played within its site.
Facebook’s strategic hits outnumber the misses
Over the past year, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) revealed a number of ambitious strategies to clarify its long-term growth strategy. Facebook Home, its ambitious Android replacement launcher, was intended to take over Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) Android phones by making Facebook a replacement operating system skin. The idea fell apart after users criticized its overbearing design. HTC bore the brunt of the failure, and was forced to pull its “Facebook Phone,” the HTC First, off the market after only a month.
However, various updates to its smartphone apps, a new video feature for Instagram, and the addition of “stickers” to rival mobile chat apps Line and Viber, were all smart moves. In addition, Facebook’s Graph Search feature, which allows users and advertisers to filter users by geographic location and interests, holds a lot of potential for optimizing targeted advertising.
Facebook’s appeal to advertisers is rooted in its ability to allow advertisers to “friend” users, and to use “likes” to fuel viral promotions. Facebook is also focusing on simplifying the process by reducing its 27 ad units by half to make ad purchases more efficient. This strategy is clearly appealing, since it even won back General Motors Company (NYSE:GM) in April, after the automaker abandoned the social network last May.
Declining CPC casts doubt on Google’s mobile future
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB)’s bullish earnings were a stark contrast to Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) and Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), which both struggled with boosting mobile revenue last quarter.
Both Google and Yahoo! have struggled with balancing the cost-per-click (CPC) of PC ads against mobile ads. The core dilemma is that the CPC for mobile ads is generally lower than PC ones, which has hurt companies that rely more on higher-priced PC ads. In addition, the PC market is shrinking rapidly, with global shipments plunging another 11% year-on-year in the second quarter.
Mobile search ads currently account for 32.5% of Google’s top-line. To remedy this imbalance, Google introduced a new AdWords program called Enhanced Campaigns, which bundles desktop and mobile ads together in a single package. Advertisers must now purchase this single package, which is aimed at balancing out its CPC, which declined 6% year-on-year last quarter, compared to a 4% drop a year ago.
By comparison, Facebook uses a bid-based model, which allows advertisers to choose a CPC or CPM (cost per thousand impressions) system. Due to the wide variety of prices seen in CPC and CPM on Facebook, it is more reliable to simply look at the overall growth of its advertising revenue.
Yahoo! is being crushed by two titans
Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO), on the other hand, is getting squeezed out of the mobile market by Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) and Google, which together account for more than 70% of global mobile revenue. Although Yahoo! recently announced that it has 340 million monthly mobile users, the company has only generated $125 million in mobile revenue annually from those users, accounting for a meager 2.5% of its 2012 revenue. Yahoo!’s overall CPC also fared worse than Google, dropping 8% last quarter.
However, under Marissa Mayer, Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) has become the market’s favorite tech underdog, and its acquisition of Tumblr has given it a valuable weapon to compete socially against Facebook and Google+. However, Yahoo!’s revenue declined 7% last quarter – a slide that is likely to continue unless it reverses the 11% decline in display advertising revenue that it reported last quarter and starts producing mobile revenue.
The Foolish Bottom Line
By all accounts, this was the blowout quarter that Facebook investors have been waiting for. Zuckerberg proved that he knew which areas the company needed to invest in, and those initiatives have paid off.
Facebook also has the advantage of youth over Google and Yahoo! – while those two older companies need to reorganize their business models to focus more on mobile users, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) is designed from the ground up to feed on and monetize social connections, which will only increase exponentially with the rising reliance on mobile devices.
The article Facebook’s Fluid Shift to Mobile Leaves Competitors in the Dust originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Leo Sun.
Leo Sun owns shares of Facebook. The Motley Fool recommends Facebook, Google, and Yahoo!. The Motley Fool owns shares of Facebook and Google. Leo is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network — entries represent the personal opinion of the blogger and are not formally edited.
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