Facebook (FB) : Q315 Earnings Whisper

All eyes will be on Facebook, Inc. (FB) after today’s close. Wall Street analysts are on average expecting the social networking giant to post $4.36 million in sales during the quarter. This would show a 0.90% decrease from the Q215 revenue of $4.04 billion, and an increase of 37.50% from the same period in Q314. EPS in Q315 are expected to come in at $0.52, a growth rate of 20.93% from $0.43 per share a year earlier. Meanwhile, EarningsWhisper.com reports a whisper number of $0.54 per share.

As a quick reminder, Facebook reported Q215 EPS of $0.50, $0.03 better than the Street’s consensus estimate. Revenue increased 39.31% year-over-year to $4.04 billion vs the $3.99 billion consensus.

Facebook began trading this morning at $103.35 to currently trade 1.14% higher from the prior days close of $102.58. On an intraday basis it has gotten as low as $102.40 and as high as $104.06.

On valuation measures, Facebook Inc. Cl A shares are priced at 104.25x this year’s forecasted earnings, compared to the industry’s 14.11x earnings multiple. The company’s current year and next year EPS growth estimates stand at 16.90% and 32.40%, compared to the industry growth rates of 13.30% and 24.50%, respectively. FB has a t-12 price-to-sales ratio of 19.88. EPS for the same period registers at $0.98.

Facebook shares have advanced 9.12% in the last 4 weeks and 6.37% in the past three months. Over the past 5 trading sessions the stock has lost 1.08%. The Menlo Park, California-based company, which is currently valued at $289.02 billion, has a median Wall Street price target of $114.00 with a high target of $146.00.

FB is up 38.85% year-over-year, compared with a 4.26% gain in the S&P 500.

In advance of FB’s Q3 earnings today, we have some key data points that we would like to share, courtesy of Verto Analytics:

• In Q3 2015, Facebook’s apps and websites (Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram) reached an average of 236M monthly users, which is 95% of the online population.*

• The average daily reach for Facebook was 185M users, resulting in Verto Stickiness Index** of 79% for Q3 2015.

• Facebook’s monthly users accessed its content (Facebook, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram) mainly via PCs (171M) and smartphones (151M), while 79M accessed via tablets.
  • 65M (27%) of Facebook’s monthly users accessed its content via mobile devices only. Out of the daily users, the average number of mobile-only users was 97M (53%).

• On average, Facebook’s users spent 40 hours per month on the company’s content

“Contrary to comments about Facebook losing its popularity, in particular among younger generations –  Facebook remains the leader of social media in the U.S. In the last quarter, Facebook reached 95% of the online population, and it is the only service with a 100% reach among users of other top social media properties. No other service comes even close,” said in a statement Hannu Verkasalo, CEO of Verto Analytics.

_{^{* The online population includes all the online users in the US age of 18 or above accessing internet through any device. Currently the population is 247.7M.}}

_{^{** The Verto Stickiness Index (VSI) compares daily users with monthly users to reflect the active, loyal, and engaged part of the audience. The higher the stickiness, the bigger the share of daily users versus the monthly users is.}}

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