Meta saw its annual revenue drop to $116.61 billion in 2022, down 1% from 2021, 1 reported Wednesday.er February the social media giant. Never, since its IPO in 2012, the firm which notably brings together Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp had seen its annual revenues decline.
This did not prevent its title from jumping 18% during electronic trading after the close of trading on Wednesday, as the market expected a more brutal fall for the Californian group which has been sailing on sight for a year, facing competition from TikTok and the economic crisis.
Another positive sign, Facebook has reached two billion daily active users, against 1.98 billion at the end of September, according to its results release. In all, some 3.74 billion people use at least one of the company’s services (social networks and messaging) every month.
Difficult beginnings for the metaverse
But these good surprises do not hide the reality of a company that has seen better days. In the fourth quarter of 2022, Meta achieved a turnover of 32.17 billion dollars (−4% year on year), and saw its net profit halved to 4.65 billion, instead of the expected 6 billion by analysts.
The company has been worrying the markets for a year, when the group first lost users on Facebook. It was shortly after its name change and the announcement of its pivot to the metaverse, this parallel universe, accessible in particular via augmented and virtual realities, presented as the future of the Internet.
Reality Labs, the branch responsible for developing the metaverse, widened its losses to 4.3 billion dollars during the past quarter, after having already lost 3.7 billion in the third quarter, and 2.6 in the second.
The shadow of TikTok
Like its Google neighbors or Snap, Meta is suffering both from the success of TikTok, from shrinking advertiser budgets due to the economic crisis, and from Apple’s regulatory changes, which are limiting the ability of social networks to collect user data to sell. ultra-targeted ads.
Many big companies rolled out major social plans in the fall, but the tech industry, and especially the big platforms, haven’t had to take these kinds of measures often until now. .
In November, boss Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would cut 11,000 positions, or about 13% of its workforce, chosen across all divisions from networks to messaging at Reality Labs. And hiring is frozen until the end of March 2023.