The heyday of Meta Platforms Inc, formerly Facebook, may be over with a weak 2nd quarter (Q2) report that fell short of market analysts' forecasts.
It also marks the failure of Meta in ensuring the sustainability of the company for 2 sessions in a row.
Looking at the company's Q2 corporate report, the company's revenue came in at $28.82 billion versus expectations of $28.94 billion and earnings fell to $2.46 per share when expectations were set at $2.59 per share.
Although the number of daily active users is seen to increase, but the monthly active users decreased at 2.93 billion compared to 2.94 billion.
In general, the company's core business, which is online advertising, was severely affected by the string of Apple Inc's security updates to its iOS services.
Pleased to be informed that the actions of the iPhone manufacturer have blocked Meta from tracking the user in determining the type of ads that will be displayed by the advertiser.
In addition, Meta also highlighted competition issues and weak economic conditions as driving factors for companies to reduce advertising budgets.
Commenting Mark Zuckerberg, the weak advertising demand environment throughout Q2 was due to widespread macroeconomic uncertainty.
Based on a Q2 revenue post that fell nearly 1% from a year earlier, Meta has issued a lower and somewhat disappointing Q3 projection.
Refinitiv sources showed Q3 revenue projected in a range of $26 billion to $28.5 billion with analysts targeting $30.5 billion.
Roughly it marks a projected decrease of 2% to 11% from a year ago.
In the meantime, Meta's efforts in introducing Reels in competition with the short video application TikTok are seen to have yet to bear fruit.
Reels introduced in Instagram are understood to bring in $1 billion in revenue per year but are still behind Instagram Stories.
On the other hand, Zuckerberg confirmed that it will reduce the number of employees next year due to the pressure of the economic slowdown.
