Meta makes significantly less profit

The bottom line is that profits fell by 52 percent to about $4.4 billion. The sales forecast also disappointed investors. They temporarily dropped the stock by about 12 percent in after-hours trading.

Facebook is concerned that advertisers are spending less on online advertising due to high inflation and economic concerns. The business of Google and the photo app Snapchat are also having a hard time.

In the second quarter, Meta reported the first drop in sales, when the minus was one percent. Although less money is coming in, costs increased by about a fifth to more than $22 billion in the quarter.

Among other things, the development of virtual worlds, to which Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wants to connect the group, continues to consume a lot of money. In the past quarter alone, the Reality Labs division, which is working on the so-called Metaverse, posted an operating loss of nearly $3.7 billion.

Since the beginning of the year, a deficit of $9.4 billion has built up. And CFO Dave Wehner announced that Reality Labs’ losses will “increase significantly” over the next year.

For the current quarter, Meta forecasts revenue of between $30 billion and $32.5 billion. In the same quarter of the previous year, it was up 20 percent to nearly $33.7 billion.

(con/sda/dpa)