Facebook Inc. has continued its stellar upwards projectory with its first quarter results showing the social networking giant continues to grow and grow.

In Q1, Facebook posted revenue of $3.54 billion, up 42 percent over the same quarter of 2014. Excluding the impact of foreign exchange rates, revenue would have been up 55 percent.

On the negative side, Q1 costs and expenses totaled $2.61 billion, an increase of 83 percent from the first quarter of 2014.

User numbers continued to grow, with Facebook reporting that their daily active users were 936 million on average for March 2015, an increase of 17 percent year-over-year.

Mobile daily active users came in at  798 million on average for March 2015, an increase of 31 percent year-over-year.

Monthly active users hit a record high of  1.44 billion as of March 31, 2015, an increase of 13 percent for the same period in 2014, while mobile monthly average users also broke a new record of 1.25 billion for March, up 24 percent over 2014.

A man of many words, Chief Executive Officer and founder of Facebook Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement that “This was a strong start to the year. We continue to focus on serving our community and connecting the world.”   

Mobile continues to be the growth driver at Facebook, with the company saying that revenues from mobile advertising performed extremely well in the first quarter, delivering 73 percent of overall advertising revenue, up from 59 percent for the same period in 2014.

While showing strong growth, the figures were slightly below market expectations and the dramatic increase in expenditure wasn’t seen coming.

In after-hours trading, Wednesday, shareholder drove the stock down two percent based on the figures released.

Credit where due to Facebook though: yes, they seem to have a slight spending problem, but likewise where many were predicting that Facebook would peak, they continue to grow user numbers. How long that can continue to, at least with their core Facebook product, is yet to be seen.

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