The group, which also oversees the Instagram social network and WhatsApp messaging, recorded in 2022, for the first since its creation in 2004, a drop in its income. A fall measured and lower than the fears of investors.
by Alexandre Piquard
Everything is relative. Meta offered herself on the stock market a jump of more than 20 % during electronic exchanges after the fence on Wednesday 1
The number of daily active users of the Facebook platform has passed the 2 billion mark, a figure “much better than we feared”, praised, on Twitter, Dan Ives. The Wedbush Securities bank analyst, however, did not fail to report in passing that “the bullish atmosphere” found was also due to the slowdown in the rise in interest rates decided on the same day by the American central bank. And at the announcement by Meta of a share buyback up to $ 40 billion, a technique used by companies to support their stock market course …
Beyond these stock market fluctuations, the company’s situation remains tense. A negative spiral started after Meta announced, for the first time, a drop in the number of daily Facebook users in February 2022, then its overall turnover in July. Despite a stabilization of the pace of the fall at the end of the year, 2022 will remain a pivotal year, with revenues down 1 %, at 118 billion dollars.
The founder, Mark Zuckerberg, recognized this historic turning point: “After [growth] for eighteen years at a rate of 20 % or 30 % per year, things have changed fairly marked this year. C ‘is a fairly big descent. I don’t think it will continue, but things will not become again as they were before, “he told analysts. To try to reassure, he promised a “year of efficiency”.
adjustments under the pressure of the markets
To explain the fall in profit – down 55 %, to 4.7 billion dollars, in the last quarter of 2022, and from 41 %, to 23 billion, in 2022 – Meta invoked 4.2 billion Dollars of restructuring costs at the end of the year. These would be linked to the 11,000 layoffs (13 % of the workforce) announced in early November 2022, but also to other savings measures: reduction in office areas, slowdown in investments and restructuring of data centers … >
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