According to a report from Variety, Meta, the social media giant, has reported its Q4 2023 results, reporting a record $40.1 billion in top-line revenue and a tripled net income that surpassed Wall Street forecasts. The company's strong results reflect a healthy rebound in digital advertising after a slowdown in 2022 that led Meta to cut back on its workforce.
Despite its already staggering size, Meta continued to add new users across platforms. The company reported 3.98 billion monthly active users across its family of apps, including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, representing a 6% increase year-over-year. The recently launched Twitter-like social app, Threads, also saw enormous growth, hitting over 130 million monthly active users.
The company's Q4 sales were up 25% from the previous year, with net income of $14.0 billion, up 201%, translating to earnings per share of $5.33. Analysts on average expected Q4 revenue of $39.18 billion and EPS of $4.96. For the first quarter of 2024, Meta expects total revenue to be $34.5 billion-$37 billion, which would represent a year-over-year increase of 20%-29%.
Meta's board has also declared a cash dividend of $0.50 per share of outstanding common stock payable on March 26, 2024. “We intend to pay a cash dividend on a quarterly basis going forward, subject to market conditions and approval by our board of directors,” the company said. Additionally, Meta announced a $50 billion increase in its share repurchase authorization today.
Shares of Meta surged more than 12% in after-hours trading to all-time highs of more than $443 per share.
“We had a good quarter as our community and business continue to grow,” Mark Zuckerberg, Meta co-founder and CEO, said in announcing the results. He added, “We’ve made a lot of progress on our vision for advancing AI and the metaverse.”
The earnings report came a day after Zuckerberg testified at a contentious Senate committee hearing Wednesday, titled “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis.”
During questioning, Zuckerberg stood up and apologized to parents of kids who were abused or exploited online, saying he was “sorry for everything that you all have gone through.” He testified that Meta is investing more than $20 billion in improving safety and security infrastructure and personnel across its family of social-media apps.
Meta's Reality Labs division, which houses the Quest AR/VR headset and metaverse initiatives, generated revenue of $1.07 billion in Q4, up 32%. Still, the division's operating loss of $4.65 billion increased 8% from the previous year. The company repeated that it expects Reality Labs' operating losses to "increase meaningfully" year-over-year in 2024 “due to our ongoing product development efforts in augmented reality/virtual reality and our investments to further scale our ecosystem.”
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