'This may be what is said that those who are chased cannot get, those who are held in their arms drop out.'
For 2 quarters in a row, Facebook owned by Meta Platforms Inc recorded a decline in its corporate earnings report causing its shares to shrink 19% during the trading session.
Looking at the results of the report, the company's earnings per share recorded $1.64 compared to the forecast of $1.89 even though the revenue managed to reach $27.71 billion from the forecast of $27.38 billion.
Overall, Meta's revenue was seen to decline 4% in the 3rd quarter (Q3) with costs and expenses jumping 19% year-on-year at $22.1 billion and operating income down 46% from a year ago at $5.66 billion.
Additionally, Meta's operating margin or business net profit declined 20% from 36% a year earlier with net income contracting 52% at $4.4 billion.
The poor performance has led Meta to set its revenue forecast for Q4 between $30 billion to $32.5 billion while analysts were expecting $32.2 billion.
Meanwhile, Meta's daily and monthly active users managed to surpass projections with 1.98 billion and 2.96 billion respectively.
However, the average revenue per user failed to break the forecast of $9.83 to only register $9.41.
According to the report, this decline in performance is due to the slow growth in online advertising, the challenge of Apple's iOS security update and the increase in TikTok users.
On the other hand, Meta's other unit, Reality Labs, which focuses on metaverse virtual business, also recorded a loss from $2.67 billion to $3.67 billion in the same period last year and a total decrease of 285 million this half of the year.
As of this writing Meta shares are trading down 5.59% at $129.82 with a market capitalization of $348.90 billion.
