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Facebook haters, look away now: BABY SNAP site's profit is up 138%

While a third of its addicts log in just from their phones

Facebook shares have rocketed after the social network biz reported record-setting growth, revenue and margins as it wrung cash from hundreds of millions of mobile users.

The Menlo Park ads website reported second-quarter revenues of $2.910bn on Wednesday, beating the $2.81bn Wall Street analysts had been expecting, and up 61 per cent on the same three-month period a year ago.

Revenues from advertising were $2.68bn, up 67 per cent year-on-year, and "payments and other fees" rose 9 percent to $234m.

Net income for the period rose 138 per cent on the same quarter a year ago to $791m, giving the company a Generally Accepting Accounting Principles (GAAP) margin of 48 per cent – a record high.

Purchases of property and equipment were $439m, up significantly on the $268m it spent a year ago as it built out more data centers to cope with its army of users, which now numbers 829m daily active users and 1.317bn monthly active ones.

It also saw its number of mobile users rocket up, with advertising revenue from phones and fondleslabs now representing 62 per cent of the total revenue, up from 41 per cent in the same quarter a year ago. Meanwhile, it has 654m daily active users logging on via mobile devices, and a whopping 399m people who only ever use mobile to access the site.

Growth is slowing in established markets like Europe and the US and Canada and accelerating abroad. But the money it makes overseas may be less lucrative, as the company was reported to be wringing around $6.44 in average revenue per user in the US and Canada, versus $1.08 in Asia and $0.86 in "Rest of World".

The company reported a GAAP operating margin of 48 per cent – a new record, and far higher than ad rival Google's 27 per cent margin from its most recent financial quarter. One potential reason for this could be the culmination of Facebook's plan to move itself off traditional hardware and onto its own gear, which has let it drop traditional server vendors for Asian assembly lines building its own designs.

More recently, Facebook said this way of designing kit had let it save a billion dollars on operating expenditures and gear buys.

"We had a good second quarter," said Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. "Our community has continued to grow, and we see a lot of opportunity ahead as we connect the rest of the world."

Markets reacted favorably to the news, with Facebook shares trading up around 5 percent. ®

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