Facebook reports better-than-expected $157-million loss*

Yeah, it sounds terrible, but revenue was a little better than analysts had projected. Investors, however, don't seem all that impressed: The stock is down 7.6 percent in after-hours trading, to $24.80. Still to come is the conference call. From AP:

The results come two months after Facebook's stock landed with a thud on its first trading day, on May 18. The day began with glitches with the Nasdaq stock market that delayed trading by half an hour. It didn't get much better from there. Despite months of hoopla that had investors thinking it would soar, the stock closed just 23 cents above its $38 IPO price. It has not reached that level since then. Though as its first public report, Facebook had a lot riding on this quarter, Wall Street's expectations were muted, which could be a reason for the stock price decline. Facebook had effectively warned investors before its IPO that Wall Street's expectations were too high. In a filing issued a week before its IPO, Facebook said its mobile users are growing at a faster pace than the number of ads on its mobile platform.

*Update: From the NYT:

Facebook already has nearly a billion users worldwide, which inevitably means user growth would slow down. More important, analysts said, was whether Facebook can keep its users engaged on the site for longer stretches of time and profit from them by offering targeted advertisements, particularly on mobile devices. "Before they were a public company Facebook was judged by growth in users," said Colin Sebastian, an analyst at R.W. Baird. "Now that they are so well penetrated in most Western markets, growth has to translate into monetization." Of particular concern, said Citibank analyst Mark Mahaney, is whether users are spending as much time on the site every day, considering how many more advertisements they are seeing on both mobile and desktop platforms.