On Wednesday as market watchers awaited the first quarter earnings report from Facebook Inc.(FB), traders were actively trading options as it ended the day as the most active.
According to TradeAlert,?620,586 options contracts traded with calls at 65.2% and puts at 34.8%. Here at The Options Insider, we noted that Facebook sat in three of the top 10 spots.?
Upon announcing earnings after the close, Facebook reported its?first-quarter earnings sat at $885 million (34 cents per share) with revenue of $2.5 billion–a 72 percent rise year-over-year. This exceeded analysts’ estimates of a 24-cent profit and revenues of $2.36 billion. In the previous year, Facebook saw a 12-cent profit with $1.46 billion in revenue.
So what’s different one year later? Facebook’s advertising business.
From mobile devices, the company reported almost 60% of its ad sales came from here. In 2013,?Facebook grabbed 17.5% of the $18 billion global mobile ad market, up from 2012’s 5.4%, according to eMarketer. This compared to Google’s 2013’s 49.3%, off from 2012’s 52.4%.?
As of the end of the first quarter, more than 1 billion Facebook members utilized their mobile devices and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg?reiterated?this by saying in a conference call that?”Mobile is a strong driver for us.”?
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, said in the company’s earnings release, “Facebook’s business is strong and growing, and this quarter was a great start to 2014. We’ve made some long term bets on the future while staying focused on executing and improving our core products and business. We’re in great position to continue making progress towards our mission.”
In other Facebook news on Wednesday, the company announced that its five-year CFO David Ebersman has resigned; David Wehner, Zynga’s former CFO, is his successor.?
During after-hours trading, Facebook’s stock was up 3.1 percent to $63.31.