Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB), was an active voice on the earnings report conference call today. As we previously reported, Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) posted a $157 million dollar loss in their first ever earnings report, as a publicly traded company. Zuckerberg stated to investors “Hopefully you’ll come away with a clear perspective on our investments.”
He went on to stress the fact that the use of smartphones to access Facebook’s mobile platform is growing. This has caused a decline in advertising revenue. Zuckerberg went on to spend several minutes describing the company’s future goals and aspirations, before continuing to the earnings report.
As the earnings statement was released and Zuckerberg spoke to investors, he spoke of the rumored Facebook phone project, project Buffy as it’s called by Facebook employees, saying that he didn’t believe the project to be worth the investment. He stated the need to continue having third party developers build apps for Facebook, as well as push the mobile industry limits. He said “building great services for these devices is essential.” Facebook has already reached an agreement with Apple to integrate into their iOS 6 cloud network.
After Zuckerberg finished, other members of Facebook’s executive staff took the mic to give the reports and offer guidance. The COO, Sheryl Sandberg, said she believed the future revenue would be generated through ads purchased by small businesses, possibly because some of the larger companies, are not very interested in Facebook ads.
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) hit their projected earnings almost perfectly this quarter. As the company reported a revenue of $1.18 billion, and an eps of $0.12. This is compared to analysts’ forecasts of $1.15 billion, and eps of $0.12. While advertising revenue was expected to be $921 million, the reported revenue for advertising was $922 million.
Even with the fact that Facebook hit its earnings expectations almost perfectly, stocks tanked to a new low of $25 per share, or almost 6% decrease. Investors are still feeling the sting of the botched IPO in April of this year, and they are acting very bearish, even though Zuckerberg feels that a strong bullish attitude is in order. He feels that Facebook has a very solid platform and that the company is just fine. Time will tell, I suppose.
