Meta has once again presented weak quarterly figures, continuing the series of disappointing business results from the technology industry.

The parent company of the social network Facebook reported a decline in sales for the second time in a row and predicted another minus for the final quarter.

Net income has plummeted more than 50 percent over the past three months.

Roland Lindner

Business correspondent in New York.

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The share price fell by more than 18 percent in after-hours trading.

It had already fallen by almost 6 percent in regular trading after other technology groups such as Google's parent holding company Alphabet had presented bad numbers the day before.

Since the beginning of the year, the Meta share has lost more than 60 percent of its value.

If Wednesday's after-hours drop continues into Thursday's regular trading, Meta's market cap would fall below $300 billion.

The company was worth more than $1 trillion at one point last year.

Hiring freezes and budget cuts

Meta now sees itself forced to save even more and wants to start with the workforce.

As CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a conference call, the company only wants to increase staff when it comes to "top priority" activities.

Elsewhere, the teams would be kept at the same level or even reduced.

The bottom line is that it is expected that the number of employees at the end of 2023 will be the same as at the end of the past quarter, when there were around 87,000.

This still meant growth of 28 percent compared to the previous year.

Zuckerberg has already put his workforce on a tighter austerity course in recent months.

According to media reports, he spoke of hiring freezes and budget cuts at staff meetings.

He also announced that he would set more aggressive performance targets and thus want to weed out employees: "Realistically, there are probably some people in the company who shouldn't be here."

Unusual contraction rate

Overall, Meta reported a 4 percent drop in revenue to $27.7 billion for the third quarter, slightly ahead of expectations.

The minus can be explained by negative currency effects.

Adjusted for that, it would have been 2 percent growth, which is still very weak by meta standards.

Net income fell 52 percent to $4.4 billion due to significantly higher costs, and earnings per share were 25 cents lower than expected.

The current contraction rate is very unusual.

Until the second quarter of this year, the company had never reported a decline in sales.

Meta expects another minus for the final three months.

The company expects revenue of between $30 billion and $32.5 billion, which was slightly lower than analysts were expecting and would be down from last year's $33.7 billion.

But Zuckerberg also tried to sound confident.

He said he believes sales will look "healthier" next year.

Tiktok is struggling with Meta

Similar to Google and other competitors, Meta is suffering from the weak economic environment, which is allowing advertisers to cut their budgets.

But there are other challenges as well.

For example, Metas services such as Facebook and Instagram are increasingly struggling to compete with the smartphone app Tiktok, which is known for short videos.

Another burden is the changed data rules of the electronics group Apple, which makes it difficult for apps like Facebook to collect user data on its devices.

This makes it harder for advertising to be tailored to individual users, and the company has said it will cost it $10 billion in revenue this year.