Facebook parent Meta misses earnings estimates, stock plunges after hours

Yahoo Finance's Jared Blikre reports on Facebook parent Meta earnings, which fell short of market expectations.

Video Transcript

BRAD SMITH: We're keeping an eye on Meta Platforms. And for that, let's bring in Jared Blikre. Jared, we're watching shares, keeping tabs on them. Let us know what we need to know about this report.

JARED BLIKRE: Facebook is getting shellacked. Do you want to go base jumping here? I hope you have a parachute if you are an investor. Revenue for the fourth quarter just about the only number that beat, and it's a very small one-- $33.67 billion, and the estimate was for lower, at $33.43 billion.

But when you go to the monthly active users-- 2.91 billion. The estimate was for more-- 2.95 billion. The daily active users-- 1.93 billion. Estimate was for 1.95 billion. They missed on EPS, coming in at $3.67. The estimate was for higher, at $3.84. Operating margin-- 37%. That was a miss. Estimate, higher-- 38.7%.

And some commentary here. They're saying that growth negatively-- is negatively impacted on Apple iOS changes. That's an advertising change that Apple made during the quarter. Meta Platforms, their Reality is-- their Reality-- excuse me, Reality Labs, that had an operating loss of $3.3 billion.

Also, another note here-- the first quarter is going to be impacted by headwinds to impression as well as price growth, and they also see themselves trading under the FB ticker until the first half of 2022. Sometime in the first half of this year, they're going to change it to META. So they're going to get that M-E-T-A. I don't know how much they paid for it, but probably a pretty penny.

Also, they see revenue for the first quarter $27 to $29 billion. Guess what? The Street expected $30.25 billion. So this stock-- let me just pull up a chart here on the YFi Interactive. I think it's down about 60 points. So let's just say it's around $260 or so. It's way down here. So the lowest prices we have seen since March of last year-- just an absolute disaster, this earnings statement by Facebook, guys.