Meta shares plunge more than 20% after decline in profits

Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has seen its share price plunge after reporting a rare decline in fourth quarter profits due to a sharp increase in expenses.

Meta’s shares fell 22.6% to 249.90 dollars (£183) in after-hours trading.

The California-based company said it earned 10.29 billion dollars (£7.38bn), or 3.67 per share, in the final three months of 2021.

That is down 8% from 11.22 billion dollars (£8.26bn), or 3.88 per share, in the same period a year earlier. Revenue rose to 20% to 33.67 billion (£24.8bn).

Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of 3.85 per share on revenue of 33.36 billion dollars (£24.6bn), according to a poll by FactSet.

Meta Platforms, formerly Facebook, took on its new name last autumn to signal CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s ambition to become what he called a “metaverse company”.

Since then, the company has been shifting resources and hiring engineers — including from competitors like Apple and Google — who can help realise his vision.

The metaverse is sort of the internet brought to life, or at least rendered in 3D.

Mr Zuckerberg has described it as a “virtual environment” you can enter instead of just viewing it on a screen.

Theoretically, the metaverse would be a place where people can meet, work and play using virtual reality headsets, augmented reality glasses, smartphone apps or other devices.

Mr Zuckerberg is betting that the metaverse will be the next generation of the internet because he thinks it is going to be a big part of the digital economy.

He expects people to start seeing Meta as a “metaverse company” in the coming years, rather than a social media company.