U.S. social media giant Meta Platforms, Inc., rebranded from Facebook, on Wednesday reported financial results for the fourth quarter (Q4) and full year ended Dec. 31, 2021, with yearly total revenue reaching 117.9 billion U.S. dollars, up 37 percent year-on-year, Trend reports citing Xinhua.
Its quarterly revenue grew to 33.7 billion dollars, up 20 percent year on-year from 28.1 billion dollars, with advertising revenue rising to 32.6 billion dollars from 27.2 billion in the same period of 2020, said the company based in Menlo Park, Northern California.
While its Q4 net income decreased to 10.3 billion dollars, an 8 percent decline from the previous year's 11.2 billion dollars, the company posted 39.4 billion dollars net income for the whole year, up 35 percent from 29.1 billion dollars in 2020. The diluted earnings per share for the year rose to 13.8 dollars from 10.1 dollars in 2020.
The monthly active users increased 4 percent year-on-year to 2.91 billion as of Dec. 31 last year, while daily active users were 1.93 billion on average for last December, an increase of 5 percent year-on-year.
Its cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities were 48 billion dollars by the end of the fourth quarter, according to the company.
"We had a solid quarter as people turned to our products to stay connected and businesses continued to use our services to grow," said Mark Zuckerberg, Meta founder and CEO.
"I'm encouraged by the progress we made this past year in a number of important growth areas like Reels, commerce, and virtual reality, and we'll continue investing in these and other key priorities in 2022 as we work towards building the metaverse," he noted.
Meta expects total revenue of the first quarter in 2022 to be in the range of 27 billion to 29 billion dollars, which represents 3 percent to 11 percent year-over-year growth.
"We anticipate modestly increasing ad targeting and measurement headwinds from platform and regulatory changes," said David Wehner, Meta's chief financial officer, adding that macroeconomic challenges like cost inflation and supply chain disruptions are impacting advertisers' budgets.