What To Expect From Facebook's Earnings Call

Facebook Inc FB is scheduled to announce its first quarter financial results after the market closes on Wednesday.

According to crowd-sourced earnings forecasts site Estimize, Wall Street analysts expect consensus EPS of $0.40 on revenue of $3.562 billion. The crowd is substantially more bullish, projecting consensus EPS of $0.45 on revenue of $3.638 billion.

These results would imply a considerable increase from 2014’s first quarter earnings of $0.34, but a decline from last quarter’s $0.54 per share.

Related Link: What The Street Thinks Of Facebook Ahead Of Earnings

Take a look at the graph below for a perspective of Facebook’s estimates and actual earnings history:

Estimize also provides a look at how estimates have changed over time.

Related Link: Will Facebook's Mobile Revenue Per User Continue To Drop In Q1?

The crowd and the experts started out agreeing on estimates in January. However, as the quarter went through, the divergence grew, and the crowd became considerably more confident on the results than the Street. There’s now a difference of more than 10 percent between the crowd’s and the Street’s projections.

What Analysts Think

Several Wall Street firms have modeled Facebook’s earnings ahead of the call. Wedbush expects Facebook to report “a solid 1Q with modest upside to consensus revenue, though relatively in-line with our estimate, as our checks have generally been constructive on 1Q trends.”

RBC Capital also remains confident on the tech giant. They “view the company correctly ramping up investments – from a position of strength –in many promising, high-growth areas (e.g. video – now at 3B daily video views vs. 1B in Q3). And those high growth areas represent Four Greenfield revenue opportunities (Instagram Monetization, Auto-Play Video Ads, FAN & WhatsApp) that can contribute well over $2B in incremental Rev in ‘15.”

Deutsche Bank and Oppenheimer rate it Buy and Outperform, respectively.