Drew Angerer/Getty Images
- Facebook stock plunged 22% in premarket trading after it posted weak fourth-quarter earnings.
- The social-media company, now called Meta, said daily active users fell quarter-on-quarter for the first time.
- CEO Mark Zuckerberg said rivals such as TikTok were increasing competition for ad revenues.
Shares in Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, plunged 22% in premarket trading Thursday after it disappointed investors with weak fourth-quarter earnings that showed daily users falling for the first time ever.
The social media giant's stock was down 21.55% in premarket trading at $253.40 as of 4.02 a.m. ET, having closed on Wednesday at $323.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said earnings were likely to stay under pressure, not least due to competition from other social media apps such as TikTok.
"People have a lot of choices for how they want to spend their time, and apps like TikTok are growing very quickly," Zuckerberg said.
Meta's profit came in at $10.3 billion in the fourth quarter, the tech giant said in its after-hours earnings report Wednesday, giving earnings per share of $3.67. Analysts polled by Bloomberg had expected EPS of $3.84.
Facebook's daily active users fell to 1.93 billion, the first quarterly decline on record. Analysts had been expecting a 1.95 billion figure.
Worryingly for investors, Meta issued some tepid guidance for the first quarter. It expects revenue to come in at $27 billion to $29 billion, down from $33.67 billion in the fourth quarter and below market expectations.
Laura Hoy, equity analyst at broker Hargreaves Lansdown, said: "Investors were understandably troubled by the results, made worse by news that the current quarter was coming with a host of headwinds — not least of which being uncertainty about advertising budgets."
from Business Insider https://ift.tt/NMeiuOEV5
No comments:
Post a Comment