By Nivedita Balu and Elizabeth Culliford
BENGALURU, India (Reuters) – Meta Platforms shares rose after the market closed on Wednesday after Facebook’s parent company reported numbers of daily active users above Wall Street’s estimates, despite the company reporting higher growth. revenue slow in a decade.
Shares of the social media giant are up 15% in expanded trading after publication
Earnings beat Wall Street expectations at $2.72 a share, compared with a market consensus of $2.56 a share, according to Refinitiv data.
Daily active users, an important metric for advertisers that indicates the level of activity on Facebook, totaled 1.96 billion, just above the market’s estimate of 1.95 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Active monthly users reached 2.94 billion, 30 million below Wall Street’s average expectation.
Meta has lost about half its market value since the start of the year, after announcing a lower-than-expected result in daily active user numbers in February. The company also made a downbeat forecast for the quarter, citing factors that included changes to Apple’s user privacy protection systems and increased competition from other platforms such as TikTok.
In the most recent results, Meta predicted second-quarter revenue of between $28 billion and $30 billion. Analysts, on average, had expected revenue of 30.6 billion.
Total revenue, which includes advertising revenue, rose 7% to $27.91 billion in the first quarter, falling short of analysts’ forecast of $28.2 billion, also according to Refinitiv data.
Net income fell 21% to $7.47 billion in the first quarter, but was above the market average forecast of $7.15 billion.
The company has lowered its 2022 total expense outlook to between $87 billion and $92 billion, down from the previous scenario of $90 billion to $95 billion.
