Facebook Parent Meta’s Solid 1Q Results Send Stock Soaring

The company behind Facebook, Meta, did really well in the first quarter of this year. They did better than what Wall Street had expected – both their income and profits were huge!

Facebook’s user base is almost at 3 billion, so it looks like this site isn’t going away anytime soon. Plus, their estimated revenue for the coming quarter is also higher than what experts predicted.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement that AI technology is creating positive changes for our apps and business. We are working more efficiently to be able to create better products faster and to help us reach what we envision in the future.

Meta Platforms Inc. said that they made $5.71 billion, or around $2.20 per share, in the first three months of this year. This is less than the money they made last year during the same time period which was around $7.47 billion ($2.72 per share). The amount for this year was lower due to some extra costs for restructuring.

Their total income rose a bit from last year and was approximately $28.65 billion (compared to the previous years’ income of $27.91 billion).

The average predictions from analysts had expected them to make around $2.02 in earnings per share with their total income at an estimated figure of about $27.67 billion; however, their actual figures were higher than what was anticipated by experts.

Meta said it has finished most of its job cuts that were announced in 2022. Another set of layoffs was declared in March this year. For the current quarter, Meta is expecting to earn revenue between $29.5 billion and $32 billion, which is higher than what analysts had predicted ($29.45 billion).

An expert called Debra Aho Williamson from the company, Insider Intelligence said that 3% of yearly revenue growth is a success even after the bad situation of 2022. Meta’s good forecast for their second quarter (Q2) revenues show they are likely beginning to recover.

Meta still has a lot to do, including fixing its ad system after the changes Apple made that made it hard for Meta to track people with ads. Since Meta makes most of its money from Facebook and Instagram ads, this was a problem. It also needs to prove why people should use Reels instead of TikTok and make sure creators stay with Meta.

Dan Morgan from Synovus Trust Company said that Meta is starting to do a lot better after it was hurt by Apple protecting people’s privacy, TikTok getting more popular than Meta, Reels making things harder for Meta, and Meta hiring lots of people and spending more money.

In the month of March, 3.02 billion people around the world used at least one of Meta’s apps including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger daily. 2.04 billion people logged-in to Facebook every day and 2.99 billion did so monthly – an increase of 4% and 2% compared to the same period last year. Because of these good news, shares of the company based in Menlo Park, California rose by 12% to $234.20 during after-hours trading.