Wall Street was surprised by higher-than-expected profits for Meta Platforms and the return of Facebook to record growth in users, but Meta's forecast for the current quarter's revenue was conservative.
Its shares rose 19% in after-hours trading on Wednesday.
According to Arabiya Net, Meta's earnings far exceeded Wall Street's goals, to $2.72 per share, compared to the average analyst estimate of $2.56, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
However, Meta's recording of the slowest revenue growth in 10 years, clouded earnings that beat expectations.
Facebook's daily active users, a key metric for advertisers as it reflects activity on the platform, reached 1.96 billion, slightly higher than the 1.95 billion forecast, according to IBES.
The number of monthly active users reached 2.94 billion, below Wall Street estimates of 30 million.
Meta has lost about half its value since the beginning of the year, after a bleak earnings report for February when the number of daily active users of Facebook fell for the first time, while the company attributed it to factors including Apple's privacy changes and heightened competition from platforms such as Tik Tok app owned by ByteDance.
Refinitiv's IBES data showed total revenue, the bulk of which comes from advertising sales, rose 7% to $27.91 billion in the first quarter, below analysts' estimates of $28.20 billion in revenue. /p>
Meta expected revenues for the second quarter to range between 28 and 30 billion dollars, while analysts expect revenues for the current quarter to reach an average of 30.63 billion dollars.
The company said its forecast reflects factors including the war in Ukraine, noting that it is monitoring the potential impact of regulatory moves in Europe.
