Facebook stock climbed above $50 in early trading Thursday after flirting with that price for most of the week. This marks a new all-time high for the company and an 87% increase from stock's price at the beginning of the year.
After suffering a long and painful decline throughout much of its first year as a public company, Facebook has seen its stock rebound on renewed optimism about its strength on mobile and the prospect of additional revenue streams, including Instagram advertising and the seemingly inevitable launch of video ads on Facebook's homepage.
Facebook returned to its IPO price of $38 a share at the end of July for the first time since going public in May 2012 and topped its previous all-time high of $45 a share earlier this month. Those gains followed an impressive second-quarter earnings report, in which Facebook revealed that mobile ads now account for 41% of its total ad revenue.
The stock has been helped this week by upgrades from multiple analysts. Mark May, an analyst with Citi, raised his price target for the stock to $55, based on talks with advertisers, which suggest that Facebook will continue to experience growth in ad revenue.
The recent stock surge has pushed Facebook's market cap above $120 billion, making it slightly more valuable than other tech giants like Intel and Qualcomm, and about $25 billion less valuable than Amazon.
[img src="http://media.ycharts.com/charts/85a1dc54f08d48a16eef6d79cecc119e.png" caption="" credit="" alt="FB Chart"]FB data by YCharts
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