Facebook's call touches on spending plans, video, forex, search

• After guiding for 50%-70% non-GAAP 2015 spending growth in October, Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) has lowered its range to 50%-65% (still above a 37% revenue growth consensus). GAAP guidance is at 55%-70%. The 2015 capex budget has been set at $2.7B-$3.2B (17% of the revenue consensus at the midpoint). Headcount rose by 45% in 2014 to 9,200. (live blogs: WSJ, BI)
• Sheryl Sandberg states Facebook, which autoplays videos as users scroll down their news feeds (audio playback requires user interaction), now sees 3B daily video views from uploaded content, and that over half of all U.S. daily users see at least one video.
• She reiterates Facebook is still in the early stages of monetizing its video traffic, as well as Instagram. New ad measurement/relevance tools will roll out to advertisers this year.
• CFO Dave Wehner notes forex is expected to have a 5% impact on 2015 revenue growth. International markets were 52% of Q4 revenue, with Europe at 27%.
• Mark Zuckerberg states Facebook has indexed a trillion posts for search, and is just beginning to build out effective search tools for combing this material. The company is a month removed from overhauling its search engine and dumping Bing.
• Other details: 1) Though PC traffic was down due to the mobile shift, PC ad sales rose 1%. 2) Game-related payments revenue fell 10%, even as total payments/fees revenue grew 7%. 3) Zuck states average daily time spent per user is up 10% Y/Y, and that 2B+ photos are now shared daily on Facebook. 4) ARPU rose to $2.81 from $2.14 a year ago. North American ARPU was $9.00.
• FB -1.7% AH. Q4 results, details, earnings slides (.pdf)