Facebook shares crashed in after-hours trading on Wednesday as the social media company narrowly missed Wall Street’s expectations.

Releasing its first quarter results, Facebook said the company had taken in $3.54bn in revenue for the first three months of the year. Analysts had been expecting $3.56bn.

The company’s ambitious expansion plans and the cost of integrating acquisitions contributed to a big rise in expenses. Expenses in the first quarter of 2015 were $2.61bn, an increase of 83% from the first quarter of 2014. Research and development spending totalled $1.06bn for the quarter, up from $455m a year ago.

Facebook’s share price dropped more than 2% on the news. It was the first quarter that Facebook missed analysts’ expectations since it went public in 2012.

“This was a strong start to the year,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO. “We continue to focus on serving our community and connecting the world.”

The company had 1.44 billion monthly active users (MAUs) in March – a 13% year-over-year rise. Mobile MAUs were 1.25 billion for that month. The company reported 936 million people were daily active users at the end of the quarter, up 17% from last year. The number of mobile daily users of the service rose 31% to 798 million.

Mobile advertising revenue, a closely watched figure, represented approximately 73% of advertising revenue for the first quarter of 2015, up from approximately 59% in the first quarter of 2014.