Meta has recorded lower quarterly turnover for the first time compared to a year earlier. The company recorded a turnover of 28.2 billion euros last quarter, one percent less than the same period in 2021. Meta expects another decrease next quarter.
In total, Meta’s revenue fell by $255 million last quarter. It is the first time that the company’s turnover has fallen, writes the Financial Times, among others. This decrease is mainly due to Meta’s ‘family of apps’, which includes Instagram and Facebook, for example. In the past quarter, revenue from that industry fell by about $400 million to $27.77 billion. The turnover from Meta’s Reality Labs, the division that works on VR and AR headsets, among other things, increased from 305 million to 452 million dollars. The company’s net profit also fell 36 percent, to about $6.69 billion. Converted, that comes down to about 6.54 billion euros.
The company attributes the drop in sales to, among other things, a ‘weak’ demand for advertisements, which according to Meta is due to the uncertain economic situation. In a conference call with shareholders, Coo Sheryl Sandberg says the average price per ad has fallen 14 percent from 2021. The company also says it is still working on a strategy to deal with Apple’s privacy changes to iOS, which the company said. cost $10 billion this year. At the same time, exchange rate trends would also have impacted sales, especially the depreciation of the euro against the dollar.
For the rest of this year, Meta expects further declines. For the third quarter, for example, Meta outlines an expected revenue of 26 to 28.5 billion dollars. Last year, Meta had revenue of $29 billion in that quarter. Those coming declines would also be caused by reduced advertising demand.
Despite the drop in revenue, Meta managed to increase the number of daily Facebook users again by three percent, to 1.97 billion. In February, Facebook first reported a drop in the number of daily users. The company indicates that it is also currently working on customizing its platforms. CEO Mark Zuckerberg tells shareholders that currently about 15 percent of all content people see on Facebook or Instagram comes from accounts they don’t follow. That percentage should double next year. This will make the platforms more like TikTok, a platform that focuses on short videos and messages that are recommended to people.
