Meta obtained 7,470 million dollars of net earnings in the first quarter of the year, a result better than expected by the market.
Facebook ‘s move to Meta isn’t yet done boosting the company’s revenue, but it seems to have had a positive effect on active users. At least that is the reading that emerges from the quarterly report of the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp in the midst of a Russian invasion of Ukraine , regulatory problems and strong competition against TikTok and other platforms.
The Californian group published a turnover that reaches 28,000 million dollars (+7% over the same quarter of last year), with an upward behavior of its shares by 12%. This is due to the increase in users on Facebook.
In this period, 30 million new users began to reach the social network created by Mark Zuckerberg, a figure that exceeds the expectation of 1.95 billion estimated by Wall Street.
In previous reports, Facebook had confirmed that the rate of active users on the network fell for the first time, causing a drop in shares of 26% at one point. This reported increase in new accounts seems to give a network that was considered stagnant some wiggle room.
Losses in mixed reality
However, not everything is positive in the report. The Reality Labs division , which recently announced the creation of its first physical store, increased its losses from 1,830 to 2,690 million dollars.
This division, hardware support for the metaverse project , does not yet have the necessary traction to drive revenue, and relies heavily on links to Meta products such as Facebook and Instagram.
Chief Financial Officer David Wehner mentioned in the report that the company expected tepid revenue growth in the second quarter due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The projection for the next quarter points to total revenues between 28,000 and 30,000 million dollars.
“This outlook reflects a continuation of the trends that impacted first quarter revenue growth, including weakness in the second half of the first quarter that coincided with the war in Ukraine,” Wehner said.
Meta’s shares rose more than 16% in after-hours trading to $204.30 a share.