Facebook Earnings Nearly Triple In Q1 On Ad Sales Boom

Facebook nearly tripled its Q1 earnings, bounding past Wall Street forecasts late Wednesday as mobile users climbed above 1 billion for the first time. The social network earned 34 cents a share excluding items, up 183% vs. a year prior and beating analyst consensus of 24 cents, according to Thomson Reuters.

Revenue jumped 72% to $2.5 billion, above estimates for $2.36 billion and marking the fourth straight quarter of accelerating growth.

CFO David Ebersman, who has been with Facebook (FB) since 2009, plans to exit in September. He'll be succeeded on June 1 by David Wehner, vice president of finance and business planning. Wehner joined in 2012 from gaming company Zynga (ZNGA).

"Very solid earnings beat and a very good quarter on the top line — the resignation of the CFO is the one big question that I think people are going to have," Robert W. Baird & Co. analyst Colin Sebastian told IBD.

Facebook stock rose more than 3% in late trading.

Monthly mobile users rose 34% year over year to 1.01 billion. Year-over-year mobile growth has slowed each quarter since the company's May 2012 initial public offering.

Total monthly users climbed 15% to 1.28 billion. About 59% of ad revenue in Q1 came via mobile, up from 53% in Q4.

Facebook has long focused on selling ads, but a spate of acquisitions and projects announced in Q1 seem to be priming the company for a facelift.

"We've made some long-term bets on the future while staying focused on executing and improving our core products and business," CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement.

Zuckerberg's company is paying as much as 2.3 billion for Oculus VR, a maker of virtual-reality hardware and software (the FTC signed off on the Oculus deal Wednesday). And Facebook will pay $19 billion for messaging app WhatsApp, which topped 500 million mobile users on Tuesday.

There are also projects that will take Facebook farther afield, like its effort to build unmanned flying drones that could eventually beam the Internet down to new users around the globe.

Zuckerberg confirmed that he will talk about new mobile ad efforts at its F8 Developers Conference that starts April 30. Facebook is widely expected to unveil a mobile ad network.

"We repeatedly have said Facebook has all the tools to make this happen," wrote Jefferies Equity Research analyst Brian Pitz on Wednesday.

Revenue from a mobile ad network could eventually be as valuable as Google's (GOOGL) AdMob mobile network , which Pitz estimates will bring in about $4.4 billion in revenue this year.

Facebook will grab 22% of global mobile digital ad sales in 2014, up from 18% last year, eMarketer predicts. Google's share is expected to slip to 47% from 49%.

The new acquisitions and initiatives have expanded Facebook's project portfolio, which has drawn comparisons to Google, says Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.

Google has become known for taking long-shot projects such as Android mobile software and turning them into global leaders. Those products don't generate much in sales, but do drive Google ads. Whether Facebook can branch out and profit from such moves remains to be seen.

Zuckerberg said he won't worry about monetizing new apps until they hit 100 million users.

"We need to give credit to Mark Zuckerberg for thinking aggressively and boldly and going beyond his comfort zone," Chowdhry told IBD. "If they're not aggressive, they'll end up being a Yahoo (YHOO) or an AOL (AOL)."