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Why Facebook has a smile on its face

Johannesburg - Facebook's stock is soaring after the world's biggest social network posted higher revenue from mobile ads and delivered a healthy second-quarter profit that reversed a loss a year ago.

Facebook Inc. said Wednesday that it earned $333m, or 13 cents per share, in the April-June period.

That's up from a loss of $157m, or 8c per share, a year ago.

Adjusted earnings were $488m, or 19c per share, above the 14c that analysts were expecting.

The Menlo Park, California-based company's stock jumped $4.93, or 18.6%, to $31.44 in extended trading on Wednesday. On Thursday the share price rose by 25.8% in the first ten minutes of trading.

The stock priced at $35 when Facebook went public in May 2012 and hasn't hit that since.

Facebook's revenue grew 53% to $1.81bn from $1.18bn, well above the $1.62m that analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.

Facebook has also quickened the pace of its revenue growth. In the first quarter, revenue grew 38% and in the fourth quarter of last year, 40%.
Mobile revenue was $655.6m, or 41% of the quarter's total advertising revenue of $1.6bn.

"We've made good progress growing our community, deepening engagement and delivering strong financial results, especially on mobile," said CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in a statement.

"The work we've done to make mobile the best Facebook experience is showing good results and provides us with a solid foundation for the future."

Facebook had 1.15 billion monthly active users as of June 30, up 21% from a year ago. The number of monthly mobile users grew 51% to 819 million.

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