SAN JOSE – Meta’s advertising business continues to run at full speed, and the Facebook group is paying its first dividend, reported dpa news.
Revenue rose by a quarter year-on-year to US$40.1 billion (RM189.35 billion) in the past quarter, Meta announced after the United States stock exchange closed on Thursday. The bottom-line profit jumped from US$4.6 billion a year ago to US$14 billion. Meta’s board of directors said they would pay a quarterly dividend of US$0.50 per share.
“We had a good quarter as our community and business continued to grow,” said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and chief executive officer.
“We’ve made a lot of progress on our vision for advancing AI and the metaverse.”
At the same time, the company continues to spend on the development of virtual worlds.
The operating loss of Reality Labs rose to US$4.65 billion from US$4.3 billion a year earlier. Meanwhile, the division’s turnover rose from US$727 million to just under US$1.1 billion.
Investors had repeatedly expressed concern that Meta was spending too much money on a technology with uncertain profit prospects. Doubts grew last year as the online advertising industry as a whole slowed down.
However, Zuckerberg emphasised at the time that he saw the future in the metaverse and would therefore keep investments up.
Investors greeted the latest figures enthusiastically. The meta share price rose by over 12% at times in after-hours trading.
Facebook now has 2.11 billion daily active users. And 3.19 billion users access at least one of the company’s apps every day. Meta also includes Instagram and WhatsApp. – February 2, 2024