Editor: Yuan Xie, David
[ New Zhiyuan Introduction] META, which focuses on the meta universe, almost caused the entire technology sector to be exhausted: VR and AR departments are in losses, and revenue expectations for the next quarter are pessimistic. The resulting stock price plummeted by more than 26% and its market value shrank by 200 billion US dollars, almost making the technology stock the world's technology stock.
In this roller coaster-like financial report season, as soon as technology giants announced their quarterly reports, many people wanted to take a heart-saving pill.
Facebook parent company Meta, a quarterly report released on Wednesday in the United States, revealed an astonishing statistics: the company's growth has stagnated globally for the first time in history.
As of Thursday afternoon local time, Meta's stock price had plummeted by more than 26%, and its market value shrank by US$220 billion, setting the largest single-day loss in the company's 18-year history.
stock price plummeted, and Xiao Zha's net worth shrank by US$30 billion
This single-day market value evaporation may be the largest single-day market value shrinkage encountered by US listed companies in the history. Not only that, this dramatic setback has also been transmitted to the entire market.
The US stock market's four consecutive rises ended, and all three indicators closed lower. As Meta's stock price plummeted, it curbed the new rebound momentum brought by optimistic performance by other large technology companies. Pressure on global technology stocks has been intensified.
Zuckerberg's total personal property has also dropped from US$121 billion before the financial report was announced to about US$92 billion, shrinking by more than US$30 billion. The peak of his total personal property is US$140 billion in September 2021.
Facebook also saw the number of users drop for the first time in its 18-year history. About 500,000 users were lost in Q4 2021, with about 1.93 billion logins per day. Africa, Latin America and India have suffered the biggest losses, indicating that its products are saturated globally – and its long-term efforts to increase as many users as possible have reached their peak.
In the past few years, Facebook's European and American user growth has been stagnant, but this decline in the past has been compensated by the continuous user growth around the world. Now, the number of users has fallen for the first time in the company's history, indicating that Facebook's daily active users has seen a pure negative growth, indicating that Facebook has also been saturated worldwide. The trend of
is also one of the reasons why Meta is working so hard to explore new fields such as the meta universe.
However, Meta also said that the increase in the number of telecommunications traffic package fees in India in 2021 is also one of the reasons for the decline in the number of Facebook's world users.
Meta internal and external troubles: the meta universe did not make money, the public relations crisis was plagued by
At present, Meta is facing strong challenges in many aspects at the same time, such as the rapid rise of its competitor TikTok, the strict investigation of its business behavior by regulators in the United States and around the world, the high but difficult transformation of the meta universe, etc.
stock price plummeted and users shrank, bringing a heavy blow to Meta's continued unremitting pursuit of growth. This "connecting the world" fanaticism is the driving force behind this social networking company's development from 2004 to 2017 to a small company that started as a Harvard dormitory.
Compared with the previous rocket-like successful performance, Meta's new hope started slowly.
According to the financial report released on Wednesday, it is still a move that is not profitable for the time being. The VR and AR hardware suites are the cornerstones of Meta's hope to build the metaverse.
In the whole year of 2021, Meta invested more than 10 billion US dollars in the Facebook Virtual Reality Labs (FRL), the department responsible for VR and AR hardware. The quarterly report shows that FRL's revenue in the quarter was only US$877 million and a quarterly loss of US$3.3 billion. The revenue of projects such as
VR, AR, etc. is actually a tiny sum to Jiuniu compared with the total revenue of Meta in the last quarter. Meta's total revenue of $33.67 billion last quarter was almost entirely derived from personalized advertising revenue tracked by users' habits on social networking sites.
This company has invested significant efforts in its dream of transforming into a hardware giant, including changing the company's name Meta, hiring ten thousand new employees, etc. But this transformation is still in its early stages.
Mark Zuckerberg said at the financial report video conference: "Last year was laying the foundation for our efforts to move forward, and this year is the year of real execution efforts."
Meta executives hope that the company can turn to a hardware giant, and this move will alleviate the many difficulties the company is facing now.
Last year, whistleblower Francis Haugen released tens of thousands of pages of internal documents of Meta, indicating that Facebook's algorithm has exacerbated the polarization and division of domestic society in the United States, enhanced the exposure of fake news, and allowed violent organizations to use platforms to gather.
Meta is therefore now under strict government investigations in the United States, and is facing antitrust litigation cases that may have a severe impact on business both in the United States and in Europe. Due to irreversible political pressure, Meta has recently given up on cryptocurrency projects.
Xiaozha was cheering up with tears and wanted to defeat TikTok
But not all growth trends of this company are negative. The number of users of products such as Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger is still growing steadily. Although Facebook's daily active users have fallen, the number of monthly login users is still increasing. Moreover, the per capita income brought by users is also increasing slightly.
Meta also announced that it would apply to change the company's stock code from FB to META. This is not only another move in the company's meta-universe offensive that began in 2021, but also the intention to change the image and divert attention during the PR crisis.
Mark Zuckerberg mentioned the threat posed by his competitor TikTok many times in the financial report video conference. He also emphasized that the company should vigorously develop Reels, a product that is against TikTok. At the meeting, Zuckerberg had to admit to investors that the company faced increasingly greater challenges in the competition to capture the attention of potential online users and needed to work hard to ensure that Reels can produce more revenue:
"Now people have too many options for spending time, and apps such as TikTok are growing too fast, which is why our efforts on Reels are very important in the long run."
According to an anonymous attendee who was not authorized to talk about the matter, Zuckerberg looked red and wore glasses rarely. Staff were told he might cry because he scratched his own eyes.
However, Mark Zuckerberg repeatedly mentioned the strength of his competitors, which can also be interpreted as a response to criticism that Meta is a monopoly giant.
Amazon is in a strong momentum, and cloud service is "present"
Some companies are happy and sad. Although Meta's life is really hard, another giant Amazon's 2021 report card is really impressive.
According to the company's latest fourth quarter and full-year financial report of fiscal year 2021, Amazon's net sales in the entire fiscal year 2021 were US$469.8 billion, an increase of 22% compared with US$386.1 billion in fiscal year 2020, excluding the positive impact of US$3.8 billion brought about by exchange rate changes, Amazon's net sales in fiscal year 2021 increased by 21% year-on-year; operating profit was US$24.9 billion.
In comparison, it was US$22.9 billion in fiscal year 2020; net profit was US$33.4 billion, compared with US$21.3 billion in fiscal year 2020.
1 quarterly report also grew rapidly. Amazon's net sales in the fourth quarter were US$137.4 billion, an increase of 9% year-on-year; net profit was US$14.3 billion, an increase of 98.6% year-on-year; earnings per share was US$27.75, an increase of 96.9% year-on-year.
As stimulated by strong performance, Amazon's stock rose nearly 15% after the market, with a market value of US$200 billion, and led technology stocks to rise after the market. (The stock price has fallen sharply)
Expert @IoT Yang Jianyong believes that the main highlight of Amazon's sections last year was cloud computing . At present, it seems that other players in this track are difficult to catch up.
Amazon's revenue in 2021 was US$469.8 billion and its net profit was US$33.4 billion. The performance was strong, with a 15% increase in after-hours, an increase in market value of US$200 billion, and led technology stocks to rise after-hours. Among Amazon's various business segments, cloud computing is beautiful, with annual revenue of US$62.2 billion (about RMB 400 billion). For players on the cloud track, this revenue scale is beyond the reach.
Other market analysis views are similar. According to Wall Street News , in key cloud business areas, Amazon has shown competitiveness, and its growth rate has even exceeded the overall revenue growth rate:
Q4's AWS cloud platform net sales was US$17.78 billion, a year-on-year increase of 40%; operating profit was US$5.293 billion, compared with US$3.564 billion in the same period last year; while in 2021, the net sales of this business reached US$62.202 billion, a year-on-year increase of 37%.
Investors were overjoyed about the growth rate of profit released in this quarterly report, which caused Amazon's stock price to jump briefly after the announcement of its performance, reversing the decline in the sluggish performance of technology stocks caused by Meta.
Meta's meta universe is still in its infancy. Compared with the mature Amazon AWS, it is still not a cash bull, but the future is promising.
Reference:
https://www.tmz.com/2022/02/03/facebook-stock-mark-zuckerberg-tiktok-users/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/ 02/03/facebook-user-growth-zuckerberg-connect-world/
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/03/facebook-shares-plummet-22percent-after-reporting-weak-guidance.html
