by Chiara Rossi Disappointing quarterly and a sharp decline in the after-hours title for Meta, the company that controls Facebook. Shares of Spotify are also dropping. Numbers and comments
Investors weren't impressed by Facebook's lackluster quarterly, renamed Meta. Shortly after the publication of the accounts, the stock of Meta Platforms dropped over 20% in the after-hours. Earnings, user growth and guidance are below analyst consensus expectations. Shares in Meta plummeted suggesting that investors aren't exactly convinced by Facebook's new look. It seems to have the same effect on Spotify. The outlook for subscribers to the music streaming platform overshadowed fourth-quarter earnings as the company's shares fell nearly 18% in late trading. Yesterday Spotify told investors to expect subscribers for the current quarter to fall short of Wall Street expectations. However, executives tried to reassure investors that growth had not spiked even as he addressed the fallout from the controversy on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast. (Here is Startmag's insight into Neil Young, Joni Mitchell and Joe Rogan: Spotify changes the music but not the players). The growth of users for Facebook and subscribers for Spotify are the focus of investors at the moment. All the details.
THE DISAPPOINTING NUMBERS OF META (FACEBOOK)Disappointing quarterly and a sharp decline in the after-hours title for Facebook, which communicated its first results since the parent company changed its name to Meta Platforms, in reference to the Metaverse, it's great future project. In the fourth quarter of 2021 Meta recorded revenues of 33.67 billion, against the expected 33.4 billion. An increase of 30% compared to the same period of 2020 (28.072 billion). Instead, profitability drops. The company posted earnings per share of $ 3.67, compared with consensus $ 3.84. WHAT HAPPENS TO USERS? Analysts were also waiting for other data: daily active users were, between October and December, 1.93 billion, against a consensus of 1.95 billion; monthly active users were 2.91 billion, less than the 2.95 billion consensus. Meta's number of monthly active users grew 9% weaker than expected.
OUTLOOK 2022For the first quarter of 2022, Meta expects revenues between 27 and 29 billion dollars, against a consensus of 30.25 billion dollars.
NEW NAME SAME PROBLEMS? As Finimize points out, Meta's main business is selling its users' "attention" to advertisers, and on this front it has performed reliably: advertising revenue increased 20% better than expected compared to the same period. of 2020. Likewise, revenue from the Reality Labs segment, where the metaverse project is being worked on, grew by 22%. While Meta's Reality Labs are growing, they still recorded a loss of over $ 3 billion in the last quarter. THE COMMENT OF THE ANALYSTS "Investors looking to Meta are starting to realize that buying its stock is no longer primarily an investment in their advertising platform," said Flynn Zaiger, CEO of the social media agency Online Optimism. "Investing in Meta now seems more like a commitment to believe that the metaverse will replace much of today's consumer experience on the Internet." And Meta has not exactly repaid investors with the confidence of being able to carry out its most ambitious enterprises, Finimize points out. "The company's latest moonlight - an attempt to launch its own cryptocurrency - ended this week after regulatory pressure prompted the company to cancel the project altogether." THE ACCOUNTS OF SPOTIFY Spotify's stock also lost significantly yesterday, down about 9%, after the balance sheet highlighted a slowdown in premium subscriptions. The company reported revenue increased 24% to 2.7 billion euros in the fourth quarter of 2021. Total monthly active users increased 18% to a record 406 million. The revenue of the users listening to the advertisements increased by 40% to 394 million euros or 15% of the total revenue. "Investors largely ignored Spotify's advertising activity during Spotify's early years as a public company, with subscriber growth dominating the narrative," LightShed Partners analyst Richard Greenfield said in a statement. . DARKENED BY FORECASTS But it is the estimates for 2022 that worry the market. Revenue for the current quarter is expected to meet estimates of € 2.60 billion. However, the streaming service expects the margin of profit gross income for the first quarter of 2022 will drop to 25% from 26.5%. Not only that, the company expects 183 million paid subscribers, below the expectations of 184 million. Spotify therefore expects to reach just three million premium subscribers in that period, a marked slowdown compared to the last few quarters.