Meta Stock Soars On Revenue, Earnings, And User Growth Gains

(CTN News) – Meta, the parent company of Facebook, rose more than 9% in after-hours trading Wednesday, after the tech giant beat Wall Street expectations for revenue, earnings, and user growth.

As a result, Meta’s year-over-year revenue grew for the first time after three consecutive quarters of revenue declines.

• In light of this growth, it is likely that the ad market, which slowed significantly in the second half of 2022 as a result of economic uncertainty, is beginning to recover.

• Alphabet, the parent company of Google, beat revenue expectations last quarter, but its revenue declined from the same time last year.

Details: Meta had previously estimated that its revenue would either decline or increase by at most 2% in the first quarter. The company’s revenue increased by approximately 3% over the previous year.

• “Meta’s community continues to grow,” said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and founder of Meta.

• With our AI work, we are achieving positive results across our business and apps as well as becoming more efficient, allowing us to build better products faster and position ourselves for long-term success.

While Meta continues to tout its investments in AI, the company’s heavy long-term investments in building a metaverse continue to eat away at its profits.

• The Reality Labs segment of lost $3.99 billion during the last quarter. Reality Labs’ operating losses are expected to increase year-over-year in 2023.

According to CNBC, here are the numbers:

• Earnings per share: $2.20.

• Refinitiv reports revenue of $28.65 billion versus $27.65 billion.

• As per StreetAccount, the number of daily active users (DAUs) for Instagram was 2.04 billion, compared to 2.01 billion expected by the company

• According to StreetAccount, monthly active users (MAUs) were 2.99 billion versus 2.99 billion expected

Be smart: positive earnings results demonstrate that its efforts to reduce expenses have paid off. In the short term, however, it will have to account for expenses incurred as a result of its restructuring efforts.

• Year-over-year, total costs increased by 10% last quarter.

• Meta announced last month that it would lay off 10,000 employees and close 5,000 positions. Meta cut 13% of its staff in November, or over 11,000 employees.

As a whole, Meta had a brutal 2022, but has since enjoyed one of the best recoveries in the technology sector.

• Year-to-date, its share price has increased 68%, recouping most of last year’s substantial losses.

However, Meta’s stock is still down significantly from its pandemic-era highs, as is the case in most of the tech sector.

• Despite the blockbuster growth rates recorded in 2021, the ad market has since significantly slowed down.

The company expects to see an increase in top-line revenue in its second quarter, signaling to investors that this momentum will continue.

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