Meta Stock Plummets After Weak Earnings. It’s More Bad News for Big Tech.
Wall Street may be running out of patience with Meta's corporate strategy.
Meta Platforms shares were getting pummeled following the company’s disappointing third-quarter earnings announcement, as a weak advertising environment took a toll on the social media giant.
The stock market carnage suggests that Wall Street is running out of patience with Meta’s (ticker: META) corporate strategy. Investors are clearly dismayed by the company’s plans to aggressively boost spending on the metaverse and other projects in 2023.
The disappointing results from the parent of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp makes three straight weak earnings reports from the tech megacaps, following results on Tuesday from both Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet (GOOGL). Amazon (AMZN) and Apple (AAPL) report Thursday afternoon.
Meta posted revenue of $27.7 billion for its third quarter, down 4% from a year ago, up about 2% in constant currency, and essentially in line with Street forecasts. Meta’s guidance had called for revenue of between $26 billion and $28.5 billion. Meta earned $1.64 a share in the quarter, falling well shy of Street consensus at $1.90 a share.
“While we face near-term challenges on revenue, the fundamentals are there for a return to stronger revenue growth,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement. “We’re approaching 2023 with a focus on prioritization and efficiency that will help us navigate the current environment and emerge an even stronger company.”
The stock slid throughout the afternoon, accelerating during the company’s earnings conference call as Meta provided little comfort to investors about the outlook. As the call neared completion, the stock was down 19%, after a 5.6% drop in Wednesday’s regular session. Shares were off 24% in premarket trading Thursday.
This has been a rough year for Meta and the company’s shareholders. There is new competition from TikTok and others. There are ongoing ad-targeting issues tied to Apple’s renewed focus on privacy protections for iPhone users as well as disappointing monetization for Reels—all amid the softening global economy. And investors remain largely skeptical about prospects for the metaverse.
The third-quarter results will do nothing to improve the market’s assessment of the stock, which now has declined about 70% since its November 2021 peak. Among other things, Zuckerberg showed no signs of backing away from the company’s aggressive investment plans for the Metaverse. And there seems to be no sign of improvement in the company’s core advertising business.
Meta’s outlook for the December quarter calls for revenue of $30 billion to $32.5 billion, at the midpoint of that range it is well short of the Street consensus forecast of $32.4 billion.
The company said in its earnings press release that it is “making some significant changes” to operate more efficiently, and will hold some teams flat in 2023 in terms of head count, while shrinking others. Meta says it expects 2023 year-end head count to be about flat with Q3 2022 levels.
Meta now expects 2022 total expenses to be in the $85 billion to $87 billion range, a slight tweak from its previous forecast for $85 billion to $88 billion; the new range includes $900 million in charges for consolidating office facilities.
Meta projects 2023 expenses in the range of $96 billion to $101 billion, including $2 billion in office consolidation charges. At the midpoint of the range, that would be a 15% hike in expenses. That forecast is likely one reason the stock is getting pummeled—investors have been urging Meta to slash spending.
In an open letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and the Meta board earlier this week, Altimeter Capital COE Brad Gerstner urged Meta to cut staff by 20%, reduce capital spending by $5 billion a year and cap spending on the metaverse to no more than $5 billion annually. Meta doesn’t appear to be following his advice.
Meta said it expects operating losses from its Reality Labs unit, which include virtual reality headsets and development of the metaverse, to “grow significantly year over year” in 2023. “Beyond 2023, we expect to pace Reality Labs investments such that we can achieve our goal of growing overall company operating income in the long run,” the company said.
In the quarter, Meta lost $3.7 billion in the Reality Labs unit. The “family of apps” segment—the core social media business—had income from operations of $9.3 billion. Advertising revenue in the quarter was $27.2 billion, down 3.6% from a year earlier.
Meta said it expects capital spending of $32 billion to $33 billion this year, and $34 billion to $39 billion next year, “driven by our investments in data centers, servers, and network infrastructure.” The range is well above the Street consensus forecast for capital spending for 2023 of $29 billion. The company added that “an increase in AI capacity is driving substantially all of our capital expenditure growth in 2023.”
On the news, shares of companies viewed as likely beneficiaries of the company’s aggressive spending plan soared in late trading, with Arista Networks (ANET) up 7%, Nvidia (NVDA) up 4% and Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) up 2%.
Write to Eric J. Savitz at eric.savitz@barrons.com