Moscow, Feb 2 (FN Agency) The value of the shares of US tech conglomerate Meta (banned in Russia) have increased by 20.16% to $184 per share after the publication of the financial performance report, trading data showed on Thursday. Prior to this, the company also reported a 2.79% increase to $153.12 per share on Wednesday, before the report was released. Meanwhile, according to the results of the fourth quarter, the company’s revenue decreased by 4.5% in annual terms reaching $32.17 billion and exceeding previous forecasts of $31.53 billion, with ad revenue amounting to $31.25 billion, a 4.2% drop year-on-year. The company’s net profit for 2022 dropped by 1.7 times to $23.2 billion, with diluted earnings per share falling to $8,59 in 2022 from $13.77 a year earlier.
Annual revenue decreased by 1% to $116.6 billion. The number of active users per day of the social network Facebook (banned in Russia) increased in annual terms by 4% in October-December 2022 and reached an average of 2 billion people, while the number of users per month rose by 2% to 2.96 billion. Last year, the company said that would make changes to achieve more efficient operations. In particular, Meta will freeze hiring in some of its departments, as well as reduce staff in a number of divisions. During the call with investors earlier in the week, the social media giant’s founder, Mark Zuckerberg, said that the “management theme” of 2023 would be efficiency and vowed to take additional measures to improve the company’s productivity and cost structure.