Facebook shares have jumped 30 per cent after the social network published its latest financial results.
Since the results were published on Wednesday 16 brokerages increased their price target for the company, which floated on the Nasdaq at US$38 a share last year, reports the BBC.
The world’s largest social network reported profits of US$333 million in the second quarter of 2013.
“Facebook has discovered the formula to begin significantly extracting value from its 1.16 billion global users,” said JMP Securities analyst Ronald Josey.
From mobile ads alone, Facebook made US$655.6 million between April and June, more than 41 per cent of the US$1.6billion in overall advertising revenue compared with 30 per cent increase in the same period last year.
Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook chief executive, said: “The work we’ve done to make mobile the best Facebook experience is showing good results and provides us with a solid foundation for the future.”
Zuckerberg added: “This quarter marks the end of our first year as a public company and I think we’ve created a good foundation for the future.”
Smartphones and tablets contributed almost half of total advertising revenue in the second quarter as the number of mobile users expanded 51 per cent to 819 million.
“I’d say that Facebook is in a unique position with the ad market right now in that it is very far ahead of any other major ad platform in mobile display advertising,” said Clark Fredricksen, of research firm eMarketer.
According to chief financial officer David Ebersman, 20 billion minutes a day were spent on Facebook in June.
As a way to perfect its ads sales programmes, Facebook last month announced changes to its Ads Manager to provide users with quality data.
According to analysts, Facebook’s rival Google has performed less well in the mobile advertising market so far.
“The Facebook versus Google debate will return to the investment community, after a year-long hiatus,” Stifel Nicolaus analyst Jordan Rohan said.
