Facebook reported second-quarter revenues up 56 percent year-on-year to USD 29.1 billion, defying the company's forecast for a slowdown in the period. With costs rising a slower 31 percent, operating profit doubled, to USD 12.4 billion from USD 6.0 billion a year ago. Facebook's net profit reached USD 10.4 billion, also doubling from USD 5.2 billion in the same period last year.
The company previously warned that revenue growth may slow due to the introducing of Apple's new advertising rules on iOS. However, similar to rival Google, Facebook appears to have profited from the general rebound in economic conditions and improving advertising market.
The company said ad revenue growth was driven by a 47 percent annual increase in the average price per ad and it expects similar growth in prices in the rest of 2021. Nevertheless, revenue growth rates are expected to slow in the third and fourth quarters as the comparison becomes more difficult following over a year of the pandemic's effects. "When viewing growth on a two-year basis to exclude the impacts from lapping the Covid-19 recovery, we expect year-over-two-year total revenue growth to decelerate modestly in the second half of 2021 compared to the second quarter growth rate," the company said. The iOS changes are also expected to have a greater effect in Q3 than in Q2, and the company remains alert for regulatory headwinds, including the ongoing problems with data trasfers from the EU to the US.
Facebook daily and monthly active users each rose 7 percent year-on-year, to respectively reached 1.81 billion and 2.90 billion in June. Including its other properties such as Instragram and WhatsApp, daily and monthly active people numbered 2.76 billion and 3.51 billion respectively, both up 12 percent.
Facebook invested USD 4.74 billion in the quarter and maintained its outlook for annual expenses of USD 70-73 billion and capex of USD 19-21 billion in 2021. The company ended the period with over USD 64 billion in cash available. The number of employees was up 21 percent year-over-year to more than 63,400 at the end of June.
