SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook reported a dip in its quarterly profit Wednesday but said revenues surged on mobile advertising gains, as its user base approaches 1.5 billion.
Facebook said monthly active users grew 13% from a year ago to 1.49 billion.
The world's biggest social network said its profit for shareholders dipped nine percent from a year earlier to $715 million, amid higher expenses for investments in new products and apps, and share-based compensation.
But total revenues surged 39% to $4.04 billion on big gains in ad revenues, chiefly from paid messages delivered to mobile devices.
Monthly active users grew 13% from a year ago to 1.49 billion, but the gain was modest from the first quarter when it had 1.44 billion.
"This was another strong quarter for our community," said Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.
"Engagement across our family of apps keeps growing, and we remain focused on improving the quality of our services."
Amid ongoing growth in Facebook, the company has been expanding its offerings of applications, including the photo-sharing service Instagram, the messaging service WhatsApp and virtual reality gearmaker Oculus.
Facebook's capital spending in the quarter was $549 million. Its research and development costs were $1.17 billion.
The big gains in revenue came from advertising, and mobile accounted for 76% of ad revenues in the quarter, up from 62% a year earlier and 73 percent in the first three months of the year.
Facebook shares dipped 1.9% in after-hours trade following the results.