Menlo Park: Social networking service Facebook’s
quarterly revenue rose more than 50 percent, handily beating Wall Street
expectations as its wildly popular mobile app and a push into live video lured
new advertisers and encouraged existing ones to boost spending.
The company’s shares rose 9.5 percent in after-hours
trading on Wednesday to $118.39, setting it on track to open at a new high on
Thursday, at nearly triple its initial public offering four years ago.
Facebook also announced it will create a new class of
non-voting shares in a move aimed at letting Chief Executive Officer Mark
Zuckerberg give away his wealth without relinquishing control of the social
media juggernaut he founded.
Some 1.65 billion people used Facebook monthly as of
March 31, 2016, up from 1.44 billion a year earlier. Zuckerberg said users were
spending more than 50 minutes per day on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, a
huge amount of time given the millions of apps available to users.
Advertisers are shifting money from television to web
and mobile platforms, and Facebook is one of the biggest beneficiaries. It
faces fierce competition in the mobile video market, where rivals Snapchat and
YouTube also garner billions of video views every day.
The company’s net income attributable to common
shareholders nearly tripled to $1.51 billion, or 52 cents per share, in the
first quarter from $509 million, or 18 cents per share, a year earlier.
Last year, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan,
announced that they would give away 99 percent of their Facebook shares to fund
charitable endeavors.
Last week, Zuckerberg and Chan were included in Time’s 100
Most Influential People 2016 list.
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