Facebook absolutely obliterated analyst estimates when it reported its first-quarter results last week. The social network reported first-quarter revenue of $26.1 billion, up 48% year over year. Net income nearly doubled, hitting $9.5 billion, translating to earnings per share of $3.30. Analysts, on average, were expecting revenue and earnings per share of $23.7 billion and $2.37, respectively.
Though the headline numbers from the earnings release certainly tell quite a story, there was a lot more for investors to digest about the tech company in Facebook’s first-quarter earnings call. Two particular topics that surfaced during the call, for instance, were the company’s growing ambitions in e-commerce and the key drivers for its huge advertising revenue growth.
Here’s what management said about these topics during the call.
Facebook has big plans for e-commerce
One hot topic during the earnings call that received more attention than usual was the social network’s growing investment in e-commerce. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg called commerce one of its “long-term opportunities” that it’s “really focused on.” In addition, Zuckerberg said, “Commerce has been growing in our services for a while, but it has become a lot more important as the pandemic has accelerated a broader shift toward businesses moving online.”
Further, it sounds like Facebook may have an interesting new e-commerce feature in its pipeline that it’s readying for release this year. “[W]ith Instagram and Facebook, we have a unique ability to bring creators and commerce together, and we will share more on that later this year,” Zuckerberg said.
Facebook already has a shopping experience that lets users sell products in a seamless shopping experience that works across Facebook and Instagram. The company has over 1 million monthly active shops and sees 250 million monthly visitors to these shops.
Surging demand from advertisers
Fueling the company’s advertising revenue growth was a 12% year-over-year increase in ad impressions and 30% growth in price per ad.
But what exactly caused such a sharp increase in advertising pricing across Facebook’s social networks? While advertising in its commerce vertical was exceptionally strong, most of Facebook’s advertising revenue growth was simply due to stronger-than-expected demand from all verticals and a sharp recovery from verticals that were negatively impacted by COVID-19.
“[R]eally just strong across-the-board demand for ads has been what’s driven it for us,” explained CFO David Wehner.
Facebook shareholders may want to give the first-quarter earnings call a listen. In addition to the call featuring further discussion of the topics covered in this article, management provided more details on Facebook Marketplace, WhatsApp, payments, and more.
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