Ali Invest, Ali blog: Facebook 4Q2014

Friday, January 30, 2015

Facebook 4Q2014

Facebook (FB) has reported 0.54 EPS and 3,851 revenue for FQ4 2014.

REPORTED WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28 AMC

	EPS	Revenue
Wall Street Consensus	0.49	3,790
Estimize Consensus 160 estimates	0.51	3,816
› FB Reported Earnings	0.54	3,851

Highlights:

Facebook's (NASDAQ:FB) ad revenue rose 53% Y/Y in Q4 to $3.85B; growth was 64% in Q3. Payments/other fees revenue rose 7% to $257M, after growing 13% in Q3.

Mobile was 69% of ad revenue vs. 66% in Q3 and 62% in Q2. Ad growth would've been 58% if not for forex.

Monthly active users (MAUs) rose 3% Q/Q and 13% Y/Y to 1.39B, and mobile MAUs 6% Q/Q and 26% Y/Y to 1.19B. Daily active users (890M) were 64% of MAUs, even with Q3.

Non-GAAP costs/expenses rose 50% Y/Y to $1.63B, nearly even with revenue growth of 49%. Non-GAAP op. margin was an eye-popping 58%. On a GAAP basis, costs/expenses were up 87% to $2.72B.

Full-year free cash flow was $3.63B, soundly exceeding net income of $2.94B. Facebook ended Q4 with $11.2B in cash/marketable securities, and no debt.

FB nearly unchanged AH for now. Q4 resul

CFO Dave Wehner notes forex is expected to have a 5% impact on 2015 revenue growth. International markets produced 52% of Q4 revenue, with Europe making up 27%.

Mark Zuckerberg states Facebook has indexed a trillion posts for search, and is just beginning to build out effective search tools for combing this material. The company is a month removed from overhauling its search engine and dumping Bing.

Other details: 1) Though PC traffic was down due to the mobile shift, PC ad sales rose 1%. 2) Game-related payments revenue fell 10%, even as total payments/fees revenue grew 7%. 3) Zuck states average daily time spent per user is up 10% Y/Y, and that 2B+ photos are now shared daily on Facebook. 4) ARPU rose to $2.81 from $2.14 a year ago. North American ARPU was $9.00.