Facebook Inc. (FB): Swinging for a Q4 Earnings Home Run?

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) has certainly garnered some attention with its recovery from about $19 per share over the last two months. The stock is only a few dollars away from being named Phoenix-book – having come back from the ashes where it started at $38 per share last May and by the fall was down more than 50 percent. Now, with the company due to report its quarterly earnings after the bell Wednesday, has the recent momentum and introduction of new features in the past few weeks translate into its earnings report?

Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) is facing Wall Street expectations of reporting revenue of $1.52 billion and an EPS of 15 cents. When the report comes out Wednesday afternoon, chances are analysts and investors will be looking at the progress Facebook might have made in monetization, considering that the company reports that 60 percent of its one billion users access Facebook via mobile devices. Also, they will probably be listening in on the earnings call after the reports is released, to see if CEO Mark Zuckerberg addresses the future of Graph Search. There seems to be great potential behind this, and some think that Graph Search may be competitive with Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) Search.

Besides Graph Search, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) has been progressing over the last couple of months, developing several new features, and tht has apparently fueled some of this momentum in the stock. There is the pay-per-message service, where users can spend $1 to send a message to someone on the network who is not in their friends circle (a friend of a friend, or a hiring manager at some company when you’re on a job hunt, for example), or $100 to send a message directly to an executive at Facebook, including Zuckerberg.

Another new feature is corralling speculation about a phone.

The new feature is simply adding voice to the Facebook Messenger app, which is set up to compete with Skype. Smartphones and tablets with the Facebook Messenger app will be able to make phone calls over wi-fi with anyone in users’ friends list. While Skype has had this ability for a while, Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) has greater potential because of the higher user engagement, not just in numbers but also in time spent on the site to go along with the convenience of accessing the voice service without having to log into Skype.

Do you thin the voice feature is leading to a Facebook smartphone? What will you be looking for in the new Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB) earnings report? Which of these new features do you think will have the best potential for the company and why? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below, and then discuss your predictions after the earnings report.

DISCLOSURE: I own no positions in any stock mentioned.

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