Facebook has been just destroying expectations for its ad business recently. It finally showed some signs of slowing in the third quarter of 2015, but not many.
Doesn't matter that much to investors, who just sent Facebook shares to an all-time high.
Facebook reported earnings on Wednesday that included more profit than had been expected at $0.57 per share and $4.5 billion in sales, besting estimates.
"We had a good quarter and got a lot done," said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, in the earnings release. "We're focused on innovating and investing for the long term to serve our community and connect the entire world."
Facebook continued to add users, with 1.55 billion monthly active users, a 14% increase from the same period in 2015.
Many of those users visit Facebook everyday. The social network said in its earnings release that it now sees a little more than 1 billion daily active users.
There's also a lot of users that only access Facebook on mobile. The company now logs around 1.39 billion mobile monthly active users, 727 million of those that are mobile only, according to Facebook's earnings report.
Those mobile users are crucial for Facebook's business. Mobile ad revenue now makes up about 78% of the company's overall advertising revenue.
Video has also become a major part of the company's platform. Zuckerberg said on Facebook's earnings call that the social network now serves 8 billion video views every day, although it bears remembering that Facebook's autoplay counts as little as three seconds as a view.
Shares in the social network immediately moved higher after the earnings dropped, with shares adding about 3% in value in just a few minutes of after-hours trading. That puts Facebook at an all-time high.
So how much do you factor into this? Well, Facebook said it makes $10.49 per North American user. Users in other parts of the world generate far less.
Facebook is among the best performing stocks of 2015. It shares are up almost 33% so far this year, compared to just 1% for the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Facebook shares recently hit an all-time high of just about $105.
There haven't been many reasons for pessimism for Facebook, but one dark cloud formed Wednesday ahead of the company's earnings announcements. Marc Andreessen, one of the most well known venture capitalists and an early investor in Facebook, sold off almost $32 million worth of shares — or 15% of his stake — in the social network. Andreesseen sits on Facebook's board of directors, requiring him to disclose when he sells stock in the company.
Nobody seems terribly concerned about the relatively low profit number primarily due to the fact that Facebook is investing heavily in projects like artificial intelligence and virtual reality. The company spent $780 million on "capital expenditures" in just the three months from July to September. That's up from $482 million in the same time last year.
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