Social media platform Facebook’s global daily users have seen a slight decline – a first in the company’s 18-year history.
This emerged when Meta, Facebook’s parent company, yesterday reported financial results for the quarter and full year ended 31 December 2021.
The company is the parent organisation of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, among other subsidiaries.
Facebook’s global daily active users declined from the previous quarter for the first time, to 1.929 billion from 1.930 billion.
As the company announced its results, Reuters reported that Meta shares plunged more than 20% late on Wednesday after the social media company posted a weaker-than-expected forecast.
Nonetheless, in a statement, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO, says: “We had a solid quarter as people turned to our products to stay connected and businesses continued to use our services to grow.
“I’m encouraged by the progress we made this past year in a number of important growth areas like Reels, commerce and virtual reality, and we’ll continue investing in these and other key priorities in 2022 as we work towards building the metaverse.”
According to the social media company, in the fourth quarter of 2021, ad impressions delivered across its family of apps increased by 13% year-over-year and the average price per ad increased by 6% year-over-year.
For the full year 2021, ad impressions increased by 10% year-over-year and the average price per ad increased by 24% year-over-year.
It notes that capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, were $5.54 billion and $19.24 billion for the fourth quarter and full year 2021, respectively.
“We repurchased $19.18 billion and $44.81 billion of our Class A common stock in the fourth quarter and full year 2021, respectively. As of 31 December 2021, we had $38.79 billion available and authorised for repurchases,” says Meta.
It adds that cash and cash equivalents and marketable securities were $48 billion as of 31 December 2021, while headcount was 71 970, an increase of 23% year-over-year.
David Wehner, Meta chief financial officer, comments: “We expect first quarter 2022 total revenue to be in the range of $27-29 billion, which represents 3-11% year-over-year growth. We expect our year-over-year growth in the first quarter to be impacted by headwinds to both impression and price growth.”
On the impressions side, Wehner says the social media doyen expects continued headwinds from both increased competition for people’s time and a shift of engagement within the company’s apps towards video surfaces like Reels, which monetise at lower rates than Feed and Stories.
On the pricing side, he points out that Meta expects growth to be negatively impacted by a few factors.
“First, we will lap a period in which Apple’s iOS changes were not in effect and we anticipate modestly increasing ad targeting and measurement headwinds from platform and regulatory changes.
“Second, we will lap a period of strong demand in the prior year and we’re hearing from advertisers that macro-economic challenges like cost inflation and supply chain disruptions are impacting advertiser budgets.
“Finally, based on current exchange rates, we expect foreign currency to be a headwind to year-over-year growth.”
In addition, Wehner says as previously noted, Meta continues to monitor developments regarding the viability of transatlantic data transfers and their potential impact on European operations.
“We expect 2022 total expenses to be in the range of $90-95 billion, updated from our prior outlook of $91-97 billion. Our anticipated expense growth is driven by investments in technical and product talent and infrastructure-related costs.
“We expect 2022 capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, to be in the range of $29-34 billion, unchanged from our prior estimate. Our planned capital expenditures are primarily driven by investments in data centres, servers, network infrastructure and office facilities. As we discussed previously, this range reflects a significant increase in our artificial intelligence and machine learning investments, which will support a number of areas across our family of apps.
“While our Reality Labs products and services may require more infrastructure capacity in the future, they do not require substantial capacity today and, as a result, are not a significant driver of 2022 capital expenditures.”
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