Facebook made billions, but shares fell. There is still a black hole in Meta

Meta (Facebook’s owner) with its latest financial results, which even exceeded investors’ expectations. Revenues of the entire conglomerate in the third quarter of this year. amounted to USD 34.15 billion, which means a gigantic increase.

Facebook and company made billions again. Half the world uses the Meta app

Total revenue of USD 34.15 billion is a result of as much as 23%. better than in the same period last year. This is one of the best few quarters in the company’s history, and the Meta is growing today at the fastest pace since the record-breaking 2021. It also managed to exceed the expectations of investors who estimated Meta’s revenue at USD 33.56 billion. that the profit per share amounted to USD 4.39, which was also better than the value expected by investors ($3.63).

The social media giant reduced its expenses by 7%. year to year to the level of USD 20.4 billion (including the effect of job cuts), and the company’s net profit amounted to USD 11.58 billion, which is a gigantic increase of as much as 164%. relative to the third quarter of 2022. Interestingly, the operating margin was also doubled, increasing from 20 to 40 percent.

Meta also boasted about the number of users of all its social media applications and messengers (mainly Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp). As many as 3.14 billion people visit at least one Meta website every day, and the monthly number of users is as many as 3.96 billion. That’s about half of the total population.

Mark Zuckerberg also revealed that Threads, presented in July this year. Meta’s new social networking site has just under 100 million monthly users. This is exactly how many people joined Threads in five days after its debut,

Investors frown. There was a bottomless pit in Meta

Despite the fantastic results, Meta’s shares, after a slight increase at the beginning, started to fall. Over the last day, the rate has changed by over 4%. down from just over $308 to $299.50 per share today. It is not clear what caused investor dissatisfaction, but it may be partly the result of subsequent losses generated by one of Meta’s areas of activity.

The Reality Labs department dealing with the development of the metaverse project (the virtual world dreamed of by Mark Zuckerberg) and other virtual reality solutions recorded a multi-billion loss. The division ended the quarter with a $3.74 billion loss, and Meta expects it could continue to lose money earned by Facebook and other social media apps. As he explains, this is “due to continuous efforts to develop products in augmented/virtual reality”, i.e. further investments in Reality Labs projects.

Finally, in recent days Meta has been facing accusations of supporting the addiction of young users to social media, which is said to have a bad influence on children and teenagers. This week, authorities in 41 U.S. states and the city of Washington filed several lawsuits against the owner of Facebook and Instagram, alleging that Meta is using “powerful and unprecedented technologies” to encourage young users to use its platforms even though it knows they are they are addictive.