Meta stumbles 18% lower amid profit miss, light revenue guidance
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Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:FB) has slid 18.3% on its fourth-quarter earnings, where profit fell short of expectations and the company guided to light revenues in the current quarter.
Revenues rose 20% from the prior year, to $33.67 billion, and easily cleared expectations there.
Costs and expenses rose by a full 38%, however, causing a drop in operating profit that fed through to an 8% decrease in net income, to $10.29 billion.
Key user figures were short as well. Daily active users came in at 1.93 billion (up 5%), vs. Street estimates for 1.95 billion. And monthly active users of 2.91 billion (up 4%) came in short of expectations for 2.95 billion.
Daily active people rose 8% to 2.82 billion on average for December, and monthly active people was 3.59 billion (up 9%) as of quarter-end.
Notably, the company changed its reporting structure, for the first time breaking out the results of its metaverse efforts in the Reality Labs unit. As expected, that unit is far from profitability.
Revenue by segment: Family of Apps, $32.79 billion (up 20%); Reality Labs, $877 million (up 22.3%); Other revenue, $155 million (down 7.7%).
Profit by segment: Family of Apps, $15.89 billion (up 6.8%); Reality Labs, -$3.3 billion (vs. year-ago -$2.1 billion).
Liquidity was $48 billion as of the end of the quarter.
It's guiding to first-quarter revenue of $27 billion-$29 billion - 3%-11% year-over-year growth, but short of an expected $30.3 billion. "We expect our year-over-year growth in the first quarter to be impacted by headwinds to both impression and price growth."
Impressions should see hurdles from "both increased competition for people's time and a shift of engagement within our apps towards video surfaces like Reels, which monetize at lower rates than Feed and Stories." On pricing, it sees several negative factors: lapping the period when iOS changes weren't in effect; lapping a period of strong demand in the prior year; and foreign currency headwinds.
In ticker news: Meta's Class A common stock will change from its current FB ticker to the symbol META in the first half of this year. No action is needed by stockholders and its CUSIP number will be unchanged.

Conference call to come at 5 p.m. ET.