Meta’s advertising business continues to run at full speed – and the Facebook Group is paying its first dividend. Sales in the last quarter rose by a quarter year-on-year to 40.1 billion dollars (36.7 billion euros), as Meta announced after the US stock market closed. The bottom line is that profits jumped from $4.6 billion a year ago to $14 billion. Meta set the quarterly dividend at 0.50 US cents.
At the same time, the group continues to spend a lot of money on the development of virtual worlds and the devices for them. Reality Labs’ operating loss rose to $4.65 billion from $4.3 billion a year earlier. Meanwhile, the division’s sales rose from $727 million to just under $1.1 billion.
Investors had repeatedly expressed concern that Meta was spending too much money on a technology with uncertain profit prospects. The doubts grew at times last year as the overall online advertising business slowed. Founder and boss Mark Zuckerberg had already confirmed back then that he saw the future in the metaverse and would therefore keep investments high.
However, investors received the current figures with enthusiasm. The price of the Meta share temporarily rose by over twelve percent in after-hours trading. Facebook now has 2.11 billion daily active users. And 3.19 billion users access at least one of the company’s apps every day. Meta also includes Instagram and WhatsApp, among others.
