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What’s behind the Facebook surge?

Trading Nation: Facebook takes flight
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Trading Nation: Facebook takes flight

Facebook continued to leave its competitors in the dust as the social media giant posted impressive earnings numbers that sent the stock flying Thursday.

"Facebook has benefited from the structural shift in how companies spend their ad dollars," Gina Sanchez, founder of Chantico Global, said Thursday on CNBC's "Power Lunch." "So at this point while other companies are suffering in sales, they still find social media, and Facebook in particular, an important ad spend."

The social network's competitors have been hurt by what Sanchez sees as a slowing sales environment. Microsoft's sales plummeted 8.5 percent from last June and while Apple and Google did see sales increase, the numbers from this year don't match up to their previous growth.

Facebook, on the other hand, has seen its sales jump consistently by more than 40 to 50 percent every year, which Sanchez attributes to the vast store of information at the company's fingertips.

"Facebook also has an incredible database that no other social media platform has," added Sanchez. "They don't even know what the value of that data is yet, so you can say that there's a lot of option value there as well."

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But Sanchez also cautions that Facebook's growth may also see a slowdown if current trends continue.

"The bigger shift that I'm concerned about is that we continue to go into a slowing environment for sales, for earnings," she said. "I'm not saying that this is going to be the case forever, but it's certainly going to be the case for a few more years. And that's going to be the challenge, is to compete for a dwindling ad spend."

Facebook added $30 billion in market capitalization Thursday, as the stock hit a record high.

Meanwhile, Lou Kerner, a partner at Flight VC and a holder of Facebook from before it went public, says that he has no intention to sell.

"A company like Facebook comes once every generation, and you hold it and run with it for as long as it goes," he said Thursday on "Power Lunch." "I think it's still, by a lot of people, underappreciated in terms of the impact it's going to have."

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