Technology

Facebook shares spike on better-than-expected quarterly earnings

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Mark Zuckerberg told the world last October that he was rebranding Facebook to Meta as the company pushes toward the metaverse.
Facebook | via Reuters

Shares of Facebook parent Meta jumped in extended trading on Wednesday after the company reported earnings that topped estimates even as revenue disappointed.

Here are the results.

  • Earnings per share: $2.72 vs $2.56 expected, according to a Refinitiv survey of analysts
  • Revenue: $27.91 billion vs $28.2 billion expected, according to Refinitiv

Wall Street is also watching other key numbers in the Meta report:

  • Daily Active Users (DAUs): 1.96 billion vs 1.95 billion expected, according to StreetAccount
  • Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 2.94 billion vs 2.97 billion expected, according to StreetAccount
  • Average Revenue per User (ARPU): $9.50 expected, according to StreetAccount

Meta updated investors for the first time since a brutal fourth-quarter earnings report in February sent the stock down 26%, its worst day ever. Daily active users in Q4 declined for the first time and the company forecast weaker-than-expected growth.

This quarter, Meta reported daily active users (DAUs) on Facebook that beat analyst estimates after reporting its first ever decline in users on record last quarter. DAUs grew to 1.96 billion in Q1, up from 1.93 billion in Q4.

The stock was up 13% after hours.

Still, the company fell below estimates for monthly active users (MAUs) at 2.94 billion versus the 2.97 billion analysts expected.

For the second quarter, Facebook forecast revenue of $28 billion to $30 billion, trailing the $30.6 billion estimate of analysts surveyed by Refinitiv. The company said the guidance reflects continued trends from the first quarter, including soft revenue growth that coincided with the war in Ukraine.

Revenue rose 7% in the quarter, the first time in Facebook’s 10-year history as a public company that growth has landed in the single digits.

Facebook’s family of apps, including the core app, Instagram and WhatsApp, accounted for 97.5% of revenue in the quarter. The remaining $695 million came from Reality Labs, the part of the company that’s attempting to build products for the metaverse.

In the family of apps business, net income dropped 13% from a year earlier to $11.48 billion. Reality Labs lost $2.96 billion in the period compared with a loss of $1.83 billion in the first quarter of 2021.

Facebook lowered its total expenses guidance for 2022 to somewhere between $87 billion to $92 billion, below its earlier estimate of $90 billion to $95 billion. It expects most of that expense growth to be driven by its Family of Apps segment, followed by Reality Labs.

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