MENLO PARK (dpa-AFX) – The Facebook group Meta (Meta Platforms (ex Facebook)) performed better in the past quarter than analysts had expected, despite a decline in sales. Meta also announced an additional $40 billion share buyback. The joy and the relief of investors about the better than expected turnover erupted in a price jump of more than 18 percent in after-hours trading on Wednesday.
In the past quarter, sales fell by four percent year-on-year to a good $32 billion (29.3 billion euros). On the market, revenues of 31.5 billion dollars were expected. Meta, with its two business pillars Facebook and Instagram, was already hit by the slowdown in the online advertising market in the previous quarters. Overall, quarterly earnings fell 55 percent to $4.65 billion.
Meanwhile, the number of users continues to grow. Facebook now has two billion daily active users – an increase of 16 million within three months. At least one Meta app was last used by 2.96 billion users per day, up from 2.93 billion three months earlier.
Founder and boss Mark Zuckerberg emphasized that 2023 should be a “year of efficiency” for the group. The focus is on becoming “stronger and more agile”. Meta announced last fall that around 11,000 jobs would be cut. The group now estimated restructuring costs of $4.2 billion for the quarter.
The controversial investments in the development of digital worlds under the keyword “Metaverse” remain high. The Reality Labs division, which bundles the virtual reality business, posted an operating loss of around $4.3 billion in the past quarter. For all of 2022, their operating loss added up to $13.7 billion on sales of just $2.16 billion.
Zuckerberg had declared the Metaverse to be the future of the company and symbolically changed the company name from Facebook to Meta. Especially after weak numbers for the third quarter, there were grumblings in investor circles about the high losses of Reality Labs. However, Zuckerberg reiterated that the investments are important for the long-term future.
For the current quarter, Meta forecast sales of between $26 billion and $28.5 billion. At least closer to the upper end of the range, that’s above the analysts’ expectation of a good 27 billion. And the group could thus achieve an increase in sales even after several quarters with shrinking revenues – the comparative value from the first quarter of 2022 is $ 27.9 billion./so/DP/zb
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