The Facebook parent company Meta had to accept a significant slowdown in its sales growth in the first quarter and does not expect any recovery in the coming months.
However, the financial results presented on Wednesday after the close of trading also contained some good news.
After Facebook lost users for the first time in its history in the final quarter of 2021, this time there was an increase again.
Roland Lindner
Business correspondent in New York.
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The bar had been set low for the Internet giant, having warned three months ago that its business would slow down significantly.
In this respect, the financial markets were initially relieved, the share price rose by more than 13 percent in after-hours trading.
However, Meta stock had previously lost almost 50 percent of its value since the start of the year, and the stock market value has slipped below $500 billion.
Warning of a drop in sales in the second quarter
Overall, Meta reported a 7 percent increase in sales to $27.9 billion for the past three months.
Analysts had expected an average of $28.2 billion, and in the final quarter of 2021 growth was still 20 percent.
For the second quarter, the company even warns of a possible drop in sales and predicts 28 billion to 30 billion dollars, compared to 29.1 billion dollars in the previous year.
Chief Financial Officer David Wehner has just weakened following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, and this is likely to have a negative impact in the second quarter as well.
Net income fell 21 percent to $7.5 billion in the first quarter due to higher expenses, but earnings per share of $2.72 were 16 cents higher than expected.
The number of daily Facebook users increased from 1.93 billion to 1.96 billion in the past three months.
Only in Europe was there a slight drop, which Facebook attributed to the war.