(Boursier.com) — Meta Platforms jumped 21% to $477 on Wall Street, the highest in its stock market history. The stock has quintupled since its October 2022 lows, when investors fled from massive spending dedicated to the metaverse… The stock even today gains around $200 billion in market capitalization. If confirmed this evening, this would be the largest increase in market capitalization in a single session, eclipsing according to Bloomberg the gains of $190 billion made by Apple and Amazon in 2022.
The parent company of Facebook impressed last night with its financial publication. Mark Zuckerberg’s group largely exceeded the profit consensus for the closed quarter, announced a new share buyback program, and also revealed a first dividend! For the just-ended fiscal fourth quarter, adjusted earnings per share were $5.33, while revenue was $40.1 billion. The consensus was $4.94 EPS for $39 billion in revenue. A year earlier, during the same period, revenues stood at $32.2 billion. Advertising revenues for the closed quarter were 38.7 billion, against 37.8 billion consensus.
Reality Labs, which notably houses the effort in the ‘metaverse’, lost 4.6 billion dollars in the quarter ended against 4.3 billion a year before, but the division is starting to generate significant revenues at 1.07 billion dollars.
Meta also strengthened its share buyback authorization by $50 billion and initiated its first dividend, at 50 cents per quarter or $2 over the year. Bloomberg measures that Zuckerberg alone will receive around $700 million in cash per year in dividends, since he holds around 350 million shares.
Meta expects revenues of $34.6 to $37 billion for its first fiscal quarter, which also quite clearly exceeds the consensus, which is close to $34 billion. The social media giant now claims 2.11 billion daily active users on Facebook, compared to 2.07 billion consensus… For 2024, the group plans spending ranging from $94 to $99 billion, while spending Salaries are expected to increase due to the effort in artificial intelligence. At the end of December 2023, the group’s workforce had decreased by 22% year-on-year.