Facebook Shares Plunge On Quarterly Earnings, Outlook

(RTTNews) - Shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (FB), Facebook parent are down more than 24% Thursday morning after reporting weaker-than-expected fourth-quarter earnings and tepid outlook. The company's first-quarter revenue outlook came in below the Street view.

For the first quarter, the company expects revenue to grow 3%-11% to $27 billion-$29 billion. On average 29 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect the company to report revenue of $30.15 billion.

Net income in the fourth quarter declined to $10.285 billion or $3.67 per share from $11.219 billion or $3.88 per share in the same quarter a year ago, hurt by higher expenses. The consensus estimate was for $3.84 per share.

Revenue for the quarter, however, increased to $33.671 billion from $28.072 billion last year.

Looking ahead to the first quarter, the company's CFO, David Wehner commented, "We expect our year-over-year growth in the first quarter to be impacted by headwinds to both impression and price growth."

The company was hit by Apple Inc.'s privacy setting change, which requires apps to obtain user's permission before tracking their data. The company said this could impact ad revenue in 2022 by $10 billion.

FB touched a new low of $237.07 this morning, before edging up to $244.89 currently.