LIVE: Facebook Modestly Beats Wall Street’s Low Expectations, Stock Tanks Anyway (FB)

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Facebook just reported its second quarter earnings.

The company modestly beat Wall Street’s expectations, which were unnaturally low, having been spoon-fed by the company during its Q2 IPO process.

“These earnings are meh,” one equities analyst just told us over IM.

Click here to see Facebook’s second quarter in charts >

The stock is down more than 9% in after-hours trading. It’s trading below $ 25 for the first time.

Ad revenues were up 28% year-over-year on a quarterly basis.

That beats Wall Street’s gimme estimates of 19%, but it’s more worrisome revenue deceleration from a company that has a revenue multiple of 15X.

By comparison, Google’s business grew 21% from a much larger base (~$ 40 billion annual revenues) during the second quarter. Its revenue multiple is only 5X.

It is laughable that people were recently saying this company would be bigger than Google. If it ever does become that big (an increasingly absurd notion) it won’t be because of its current ads business, that’s for sure.

Facebook’s profits are flat year-over-year because operating profit margin has decreased. That’s horrible news. Facebook is investing, which is smart, but a margin decline like that is startling.

Here’s a link to the earnings press release.

THE NUMBERS:

• Revenue of $ 1.18 billion vs. $ 1.147 billion consensus. 
• Non-GAAP EPS of $ 0.12 vs. $ 0.12 consensus.
• Advertising revenues were $ 992 million versus a $ 921 million consensus.
• Active users are 955 million. Daily use is 552 million.
• 543 million mobile users.

Facebook is holding a conference call to go through earnings. We’re covering them live, now. Anything not in quotes is a paraphrase:

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