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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Photo: Erin Scott / REUTERS
Meta revenue fell about 1 percent year over year to $28.8 billion in the second quarter.
The bottom line is that profits shrank by 27 percent to almost 6.7 billion dollars (around 6.6 billion euros).
Top manager Sheryl Sandberg also pointed to the strong dollar, which led to an unfavorable translation of foreign earnings on the balance sheet.
Without the rise in the dollar exchange rate, there would have been a three percent increase in sales, she emphasized in a conference call with analysts.
Like Google and Microsoft, the group from Palo Alto is suffering from the strong dollar and the global economic slowdown.
However, the online advertising industry leader Google did better than expected in the past quarter, which should also affect the number two Meta.
The revenue forecast for the current quarter was lower than analysts had expected, ranging from $26 billion to $28.5 billion.
CFO Dave Wehner cited the weakening of the online advertising market, which was already noticeable in the second quarter, in view of the economic uncertainty.
So far, Facebook and Meta have shown themselves to be resilient to all economic downturns.
With knowledge of the interests and social connections of billions of users, the platform offered advertisers the ability to target their ads to the desired audiences.
The first cracks in the system appeared last year after Apple introduced new privacy protection rules.
Developers like Facebook are now required to explicitly ask iPhone users for permission if they want to track their behavior across different apps and services.
Many users rejected this – and the torpedoed ad models on Facebook, among others.
The number of users who access at least one app from the group every day rose from 2.87 to 2.88 billion within three months.
Facebook saw an increase from 1.96 to 1.97 billion daily users.
The group also includes Instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta also announced a change in leadership on Wednesday.
The previous CFO Wehner is to take over the newly created position of strategy chief in November.
The new chief financial officer will therefore be Susan Li. A gap opened up on the executive floor after Sandberg announced her retirement.
She was regarded as Zuckerberg's right-hand man and an architect of Facebook's business model.
jul/dpa/Reuters
