All right, well, let's move on here to our stock of the week. Drum roll.
We're gonna cue it up, please. Thank you. Okay.
Looking at meta after the company's surprised Wall Street
by beating revenue estimates for the fourth quarter.
So let's take a look at some of the positive data out of the report.
Facebook's parent company reporting more than 32 billion in sales for the quarter,
beating on daily active users, an average revenue per user as well.
While its monthly active users were slightly below estimates,
it still showed that some three billion people use the app every month,
almost 40% of the world's population.
Facebook parent company has seen one of its best
days of the stock market trading on Thursday,
jumping 23% in a single session after the
Mark Zuckerberg led company noted signs of improvement
while the tech giant,
which is fueled by advertising that's hands down and spreading
butter after the business saying it anticipates lower costs this
year and sees sales in the first three months of
the year exceeding the same metric from a year ago.
The stock of 24% this week and a stock pop welcome
news to shareholders who saw shares tumbled from 65% in 2022.
Well, underperforming the broader market,
the company grappling with a slump in digital advertising,
as well as ongoing competition from Tiktok last year.
The Fed's announcement, Wednesday of slower rate rises,
giving meta some extra momentum announcing a
$40 billion dollars stock buyback program.
Zuckerberg calling this a quote year of efficiency as the
company looks to lower operating expenses and improve profits.
Well, Zuckerberg,
surprising many in late 2021 when he
announced the company's pivot toward virtual reality,
sinking billions into the metaverse
and drawing some sharp criticism from both analysts and investors.
In fact, many investors feel the move is a distraction from the come
Core money maker. It's ad sales,
but now we know just how much meta sunk into
this sparse virtual world last year.
It's reality labs unit lost a whopping 13.7 billion in 2022,
shed 4.4 billion on the metaverse in the fourth quarter alone.
That's more than twice the total revenue from the metaverse for 2022.
While there is some excitement for its VR offerings. Name of the quest Pro two
headset, it's still extremely pricey at $1500
and that's not a small investment for people
who may be suffering from an economic downturn.
Report showing that sales of VR headsets actually
declined 2% in 2022 compared to 2021.
Well,
it's virtual reality offerings will soon face increased competition is Apple and
Sony are set to launch mixed reality and VR headsets respectively,
Investors will want to make sure that meta can
keep up with the ad sales momentum this year.
While also making good on its metaverse promises Zuckerberg hoping to get a billion
people in the metaverse by the second half of the decade and right now,
it has just about 400 million monthly active users,
most of which come from roadblocks.