Facebook reports first-quarter revenue up 38%, profit up 7%

Facebook reported first-quarter financial results Wednesday afternoon that exceeded expectations, including revenue that was up 38% and profit that rose 7% year-over-year.

The Menlo Park, Calif., company said profit totaled $219 million, or 9 cents a share, compared with $205 million, or 9 cents, in the year-earlier quarter.

Excluding one-time items, the social network earned 12 cents a share.

Revenue totaled $1.46 billion, compared with $1.06 billion a year earlier. Revenue from advertising was $1.25 billion, which represented 85% of total revenue and a 43% increase over the same quarter last year.

Mobile advertising revenue, a closely watched metric, represented about 30% of advertising revenue for the first quarter, up from 23% in the previous quarter.

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Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting Facebook to report earnings of 12 cents a share on revenue of $1.44 billion.

Facebook had 665 million daily active users on average for March, a 26% year-over-year increase. Monthly active users totaled 1.11 billion as of March 31, a 23% increase. Mobile monthly average users were 751 million, up 54%.

“We’ve made a lot of progress in the first few months of the year,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. “We have seen strong growth and engagement across our community and launched several exciting products.”

So far this year, Facebook has launched Facebook Home, a mobile experience for the Android operating system, and several new advertising products. The company’s Instagram app recently reached 100 million monthly active users.

The company will host a call with analysts at 2 p.m. to discuss its earnings.

Facebook released its earnings after the markets closed. During regular trading, its stock was down 34 cents, or 1.2%, to $27.43.

After hours, shares dipped slightly after earnings were reported.

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