Meta recently released its first quarter financial report for 2022. According to the financial report, Meta's total revenue in the first quarter was US$27.908 billion, a 7% increase from US$26.171 billion in the same period last year; net profit was US$7.465 billion, a 21% decrease from US$9.497 billion in the same period last year.
Among them, Reality Labs, which coordinates the AR/VR metacosmic business, had revenue of US$695 million in Q1 2022, higher than US$534 million in the first quarter of 2021, a year-on-year increase of 30.15%; while the cost of the department was as high as US$3.7 billion, higher than US$2.4 billion in the first quarter of 2021, with a loss of US$2.96 billion, and the year-on-year loss expanded to 62%, narrowing on the previous quarter, a decrease of 10.4%. Reality Labs' revenue growth was driven by Quest 2 sales, said the CFO of
Meta. Although costs have increased significantly, revenue is also on the rise, which to some extent shows that Quest 2's success shows no signs of slowing down.
However, the increase in costs is not surprising. Mark Zuckerberg warned investors in October that investments in AR and VR will reduce Meta's overall profit by $10 billion in 2021, and said "I expect this investment to grow further in the next few years." Meta's chief financial officer interpreted the first quarter cost increase as "driven by employee-related costs, R&D and operating expenses, and sales costs."
Zuckerberg reminded investors in a future vision description in July 2021 that he hopes to build Meta into a meta-universe company in about five years, but the continued investment in tens of billions of dollars each year will erode the group's profits. This may be the biggest bet in the history of the tech industry, but will it work?
