Shares in Meta Platforms jumped 12% in after-hours trading following the company’s report of better-than-expected first-quarter financials.
Despite being well below the record highs established in mid-2021, the stock has nearly doubled this year so far. It ended regular trading Wednesday at $209.40, up 1%.
Meta, parent of social media giants Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, posted total revenue of $28.65 billion. While that was up only 3% from the year-ago quarter, it was about $1 billion better than Wall Street analysts’ consensus forecast. Earnings per share slid 19% to $2.20 but still handily cleared the Street’s $2.01 bar.
Facebook ended the quarter with 2.04 billion daily users, up 4% from a year ago. Advertising across the full portfolio reached $28.1 billion, better than expectations, despite gyrations affecting all ad sellers in the marketplace. The average price per ad fell 17%, Meta said, while impressions rose 26% year-over-year.
Responding to the historic slowdown hitting the tech sector amid a worsening economy, Meta said last month it was cutting another 10,000 jobs, on top of a round of layoffs in 2022. As of the March 31 end of the quarter, total head count stood at 77,114, but that number included the just-announced 10,000 who are targeted to depart.
Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in the earnings release that artificial intelligence is “is driving good results across our apps and business.” The company is also becoming “more efficient so we can build better products faster and put ourselves in a stronger position to deliver our long term vision,” he added. Zuckerberg has declared 2023 to be a “year of efficiency” for Meta, as the company balances its ambitions in exploring the emerging metaverse with growing its nearly 20-year-old core of more conventional digital assets.