Facebook shareholders are smiling wide this morning, as the preeminent social media company on the planet surged to an all-time high of $174.70 following its latest strong quarterly report on Wednesday.
FB shares jumped more than 5 percent in early morning trading, buoyed by the Palo Alto-based company continuing to rake in cash — $9.3 billion in Q2 revenue — and add users to its platform, as well as its satellite apps. Facebook pushed to a staggering 2.01 billion monthly users last quarter — more than half of the world’s internet population — and WhatsApp, its popular messaging app — now has more than 1 billion daily users.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg characterized his company’s performance as a “good second quarter,” with Facebook narrowly edging past analyst estimates of $9.2 billion in revenue. On its Q2 conference call, a Facebook executive said the company will be hiring more workers in the second half of 2017, but also forecasted a cut in projected spending — music to investors’ ears.
The stock bump on Thursday pushed Facebook’s market cap to $505 billion.
One key takeaway highlighted Facebook’s ongoing dominance, despite the modest beat on estimates: It has $35.5 billion in cash — more than Twitter and Snap’s combined market cap.
Facebook continues to gobble up online ad revenue, and it’s finding new places to do it. It’s just started to roll out ads within Messenger, its instant messaging service, and it’ll soon debut its slate of original content-– giving it another space to draw eyeballs for advertisers.