Meta announces 4 per cent year-on-year fall in Q3 revenues as metaverse arm racks up huge losses

Facebook owner Meta has announced revenues of $27.7bn (£23.9bn) for Q3, 2022, a 4 per cent year-on-year decline. The company also revealed that its metaverse division, Reality Labs, racked up losses of  $3.7bn in the quarter, adding that it expects those losses to “grow significantly year-over-year” in 2023. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would reduce budgets across most teams.

Despite profits for the quarter approaching $4.4bn and a rise in daily active users across its various platform from 2.88bn in Q2 to 2.93bn in Q3, shares in the company fell 18 per cent in after-hours trading on the back of the results.

On an earnings call, Zuckerberg defended the company’s investment in new projects, saying: “Over time, these are going to end up being very important investments for the future of our business. This is some of the most historic work we’re doing. People are going to look back on [this] decades from now and talk about the importance of the work that was done here.”