Trading/Wallstreet/ Fb stock etc
Social media giant Facebook (ticker: FB) crushed earnings, revenue and active user expectations on Wednesday, catapulting the stock as much as 7 percent higher as Facebook continued its already impressive winning streak and reached another all-time high.
Shares topped the $130 level for the first time in after-hours trading.
Going into the second-quarter earnings report, FB stock was up 30 percent in the last year and more than 17 percent in 2016, so shareholders will continue to enjoy big returns from the social media darling after another blowout quarter.
In sharp contrast to Twitter, which grew monthly active users (MAUs) by just 3 percent to 313 million, Facebook grew MAUs by 15 percent to 1.71 billion last quarter. That"s roughly 23 percent of the world"s population.
Facebook adjusted earnings per share came in at 97 cents, up 94 percent from the same quarter last year. Revenue was up 59 percent to $6.44 billion. Mobile advertising revenue made up approximately 84 percent of overall revenue last quarter, up from 76 percent in the year-ago period.
Analysts were expecting Facebook to report EPS of 82 cents on revenue of $6.02 billion.
"This is a $350 billion company that continues to be able to grow at rates similar to much smaller more nimble technology companies," says Michael Palumbo, author of "Calculated Risk" and the founder of Third Millennium Trading. "At some point Facebook will reach a ceiling to growth that all large companies hit, but that ceiling is nowhere in sight."
Facebook has become one of the hottest names in the market in recent years as it gains ground on Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL) as the go-to platform for mobile and digital advertising.
Facebook is the latest technology heavyweight to report earnings this week, following Apple (AAPL) and Twitter (TWTR), which both reported Tuesday. While Apple"s earnings beat expectations and sent the stock soaring above $100 per share, Facebook rival Twitter deeply disappointed.
"Unlike Twitter, which as we saw yesterday is struggling across the board, Facebook is doing a nice job of maintaining its momentum, launching new products that connect with both users and advertisers, and they"re monetizing them nicely," says James Gellert, CEO of Rapid Ratings, a financial health ratings firm.
Video is central to strategy. Video has been a major point of emphasis for Facebook over the last year, as it attempts to woo traditional TV advertisers to allocate larger chunks of their budget to web video. Alphabet, which owns YouTube, is Facebook"s most formidable rival here, although Twitter is also gunning for those dollars and has struck streaming deals with the four major U.S. sports leagues.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg made a point to highlight his company"s focus on video in the news release. "We"re particularly pleased with our progress in video as we move towards a world where video is at the heart of all our services," he said. Facebook Live has been an important part of that effort as the company strives to bring compelling, original, and timely content to its platform in order to keep users coming back.
Facebook Messenger, which finally hit 1 billion users, should also become more important to the company"s strategy going forward, as Zuckerberg has said seriously monetizing Facebook"s properties doesn"t become a serious priority until the billion-user mark.
That said, Instagram isn"t close to the billion-user mark it hit 500 million users in June but the company is starting to take steps to make that a cash cow as well.
The biggest mobile and video-based competitor that Facebook doesn"t own is Snapchat, which Facebook attempted to buy in 2013 for $3 billion. Evan Spiegel, the co-founder of Snapchat, turned that deal down, and has since been richly rewarded. Snapchat"s most recent funding round pegged its valuation around $18 billion.
From the look of it, it seems FB stock will continue charging higher after its blowout Q2 earnings, and the company seems nearly unstoppable right now.
The best investors, ever.
(Getty Images)
Stocks mentioned in this story: NFLX, AAPL, IEP, BRK.A, BRK.B
In every field of human endeavor, an elite few shine brighter than the rest. Some disciplines don"t lend themselves well to objective comparisons. Who are the best baristas, traffic cops and psychiatrists of all time? It"s rather tough to say. But in areas like sports, box office results, book sales and yes, investing returns, the results are plain as day. It"s truly fascinating to see how the best investors of all time built their fortunes, so here are the nine best investors ever, in all their glory.
David SwensenDavid Swensen
(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
As chief investment officer at Yale University, David Swensen is a financial all-star with a unparalleled track record. Swensen took control of Yale"s endowment in the mid-1980s, and over the next 30 years generated annualized returns of 13.9 percent, beating its benchmark by 4 percent per year, and easily surpassing the returns of domestic equities, which earned 10.7 percent annually. His brilliance was in pioneering modern portfolio theory, which focuses on diversified exposure to different high-return asset classes. Swensen details his approach in his book, "Pioneering Portfolio Management."
Peter LynchPeter Lynch
(Wendy Maeda/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Peter Lynch didn"t just post eye-popping returns at Fidelity"s Magellan Fund, he also penned two classic investing books, "One Up on Wall Street" and "Beating the Street." What gave him authority was his 13-year tenure at Magellan, where Lynch"s growth-focused fund earned 29.2 percent annually, crushing the 15.8 percent average return of the Standard & Poor"s 500 index. Lynch took Magellan from $18 million to $14 billion. If you would"ve invested $10,000 in Magellan in 1977, it would"ve turned into $280,000 by the time Lynch retired.
Carl IcahnCarl Icahn
(Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for New York Times)
Carl Icahn has been a Wall Street icon since the 1980s, when he and T. Boone Pickens ushered in the age of corporate raiders and activist investors. Unlike Pickens, Icahn is still a mover and shaker 30 years later. In recent years, Icahn has made billions on big-time bets on Netflix (ticker: NFLX) and Apple (AAPL). That"s helped his holding company, Icahn Enterprises (IEP) return 14.6 percent annually over the last 15 years, while the S&P 500 has returned just 5.6 percent annually over the same period.
John TempletonJohn Templeton
(AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler)
John Templeton pioneered the use of diversified mutual funds and had consistently impressive returns over 60 years. In the depressed market of 1939, Templeton borrowed $10,000 and bought 100 shares of every stock under $1 on the New York Stock Exchange. All but four stocks would be profitable, and four years later he sold them for over $40,000. An investment of $10,000 in the Templeton Growth Fund in 1954 would"ve turned into $2 million by 1992. Templeton died in 2008.
Bill MillerBill Miller
(AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Bill Miller has done something that many of the greatest investors ever have never accomplished: Over a 15-year period (1991-2005), Miller"s Legg Mason Value Trust beat the S&P 500 index every year. Morningstar.com named him the "Fund Manager of the Decade" in 1999. Between 1990 to 2006, Miller turned his fund from $750 million to more than $20 billion in assets under management. An unconventional value investor, Miller believes high-growth stocks can be value stocks if they trade for the right price.
Warren BuffettWarren Buffett
(Paul Morigi/Getty Images for Fortune/Time Inc)
Warren Buffett is widely considered the single best investor of all time, and that"s simply because his numbers are so otherworldly. Since taking the helm at Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.A, BRK.B) in 1965, Buffett has returned 20.8 percent annually for shareholders, while the S&P 500 index returned less than half that 9.7 percent per annum. The duration, consistency, and magnitude of these exceptional returns are literally unmatched, and helped earned early (and even late-coming) shareholders a fortune.
Kirk KerkorianKirk Kerkorian
(Chelsea Lauren/Getty Images for Joan Dangerfield)
Kirk Kerkorian wasn"t a stock market guru but he was a legendary investor all the same. Born to immigrants, he saved his earnings as a pilot during World War II, bought a $5,000 Cessna, and briefly flew commercially before buying the small Trans International Airlines for $60,000 in 1947. He grew it dramatically and sold it for $104 million in 1968. He parlayed his riches into Las Vegas and Hollywood, building several massive resorts and casinos and acquiring Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Upon his death in 2015, Kerkorian was worth $4 billion.
John BogleJohn Bogle
(AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
John "Jack" Bogle is the only investor on this list who made his fortune merely trying to match the returns of the overall market. His groundbreaking idea was the low-cost index fund, a passive mutual fund that seeks to replicate the returns of benchmark indices through buying and holding its components. He founded The Vanguard Group in 1974, and the flagship Vanguard 500 index fund was opened in 1975 as the first index mutual fund. Today, Vanguard operates about 170 funds with more than $2 trillion in assets under management.
Jerry BussJerry Buss
(Lisa Blumenfeld/Getty Images)
Like Kerkorian, Jerry Buss has an enviable rags-to-riches story and he didn"t use the stock market. As a child, Buss worked odd jobs shoe-shining and ditch-digging to get by. After college, he and four other investors put down $6,000 and borrowed $100,000 to buy a 14-unit apartment building in 1959 that would morph into a $350 million real estate business within 18 years. He bought the NBA"s Los Angeles Lakers, the NHL"s Los Angeles Kings, the Forum, and another property for $67.5 million in 1979. Buss died in 2013.
Read MoreSource: http://money.usnews.com/investing/articles/2016-07-27/facebook-earnings-catapult-fb-stock-to-all-time-highs
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