Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) will release its fiscal second-quarter results on July 23 after the bell. The stock has rallied more than 21% since its April 29 lows of $56.14 as investors expected upside to Wall Street estimates. Wedbush Securities analysts Shyam Patil and Andy Cheng said in a research note that their checks and industry data points suggest solid Q2 results. The recent comScore data shows strong user growth and engagement trends.
Facebook revenues expected to jump 56%
Wedbush expects the social networking giant to report revenues of $2.82 billion, up 56% YoY and slightly above the consensus estimate of $2.81 billion. Patil and Cheng expect ad revenues to come in at $2.60 billion, a growth of 63% over the previous year. Mobile advertising revenue is expected to surge 138% YoY to $1.56 billion, while desktop ad revenues should grow a modest 10% to $1.04 billion.
Deutsche Bank has an Outperform rating on the stock with $80 price target. Industry data points show healthy ad spending trends for the Menlo Park-based company’s advertising business. World Cup further boosted ad spending on the platform. In fact, the FIFA World Cup represented about 10% of total annual budget for on sPMD, says Wedbush. Another sPMD told analysts that Q2 ad spending rose 51% YoY.
Pricing is also increasing, thanks to the News Feed demand. While desktop eCPMs remain stable, mobile pricing has soared more than 100% YoY and 20%-30% QoQ. Mobile pricing is still lower than the desktop pricing. The larger, right rail (RR) desktop ads, which Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) redesigned recently, reduce the ad inventory, but are likely to fetch higher prices. Sources told Wedbush analysts that Facebook has reduced its video ad pricing in an attempt to make them more accessible.
comScore data points to mixed PC-only user growth for Facebook
Wedbush analysts said the social networking giant’s user growth and engagement trends remain strong. According to analytics firm comScore, total minutes spent on Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) (PC+mobile) in the U.S. soared 56% during the second-quarter. Total number of unique visitors in the United States grew 2% YoY. However, PC-only U.S. data shows that the number of unique visitors fell 3%. However, analysts aren’t concerned about the PC-only data. In previous quarters when the analytics firm reported mixed PC-only data, the company’s revenue and user growth results were still positive.
Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) shares gained 0.44% to $68.72 in pre-market trading Monday.
