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Facebook reports Q1 earnings: over 900m active users, Instagram cost $300m plus 23 million shares

Facebook reports Q1 earnings: over 900m active users, Instagram cost $300m plus 23 million shares

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Facebook has reported earnings for the first quarter of 2012, revealing that it has now hit 900 million monthly active users.

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Ahead of its IPO later this year, Facebook just released an updated Form S-1 with first quarter earnings that's now available for perusal in the SEC's filing system. Revenue is up considerably year over year — $1.06 billion versus $731 million a year ago — but net income is down a tad from $233 million to $205 million. The lower profit is attributed to just about everything in Facebook's financial sheet: operating and administrative costs, marketing, and R&D. Monthly active users of the service are now reported at a whopping 901 million, up from 680 million at the end of Q1 2011. That's year-over-year growth of over 32 percent. Of those 901 million, some 526 million are active on a daily basis.

Though Facebook's blockbuster purchase of Instagram isn't reflected in the Q1 numbers — the deal happened this month, and Q1 ended on March 31st — the S-1 reveals some interesting details of the acquisition. Notably, Zuckerberg's team paid some $300 million in cash plus "approximately" 23 million shares of Facebook. Considering the $1 billion sale price being thrown around, that would value those shares at a little over $30, and odds are pretty good we'll see that share price go well higher both before and after the IPO date.