Meta Platforms (Facebook) Q4 Earnings Takeaways: Big EPS Miss, Revenue Beat, New Ticker

Meta Platforms Inc FB reported fourth quarter and full fiscal year financial results after market close Wednesday.

What Happened: Meta Platforms, which was previously known as Facebook, reported fourth-quarter revenue of $33.67 billion, which beat an estimate of $33.38 billion, according to Benzinga Pro. Quarterly revenue was up 20% year-over-year.

The company reported earnings per share of $3.67, missing estimates of $3.84.

Meta reported 2.91 billion monthly active users for Facebook. Daily active users were 1.93 billion to end the year, up 5% year-over-year.

Advertising revenue in the quarter was $32.6 billion.

The company said ad impressions delivered in the fourth quarter were up 13% year over year. The company also saw ad prices up 6%.

“We had a solid quarter as people turned to our products to stay connected and businesses continued to use our services to grow,” Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said.

See Also: What To Watch On Meta's Chart After The Stock Reacts To Q4 Earnings

What’s Next: Meta Platforms will report results under two business segments beginning with the fourth quarter. The categories are family of apps (Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp) and Reality Labs (augmented reality, virtual reality, software, content).

Reality Labs revenue was $877 million in the fourth quarter, up from $558 million in the third quarter and $717 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020.

“While our Reality Labs products and services may require more infrastructure capacity in the future, they do not require substantial capacity today and, as a result, are not a significant driver of 2022 capital expenditures,” the company said.

Meta is guiding for fiscal 2022 revenue to come in a range of $27 billion to $29 billion.

Competition for people’s times, price growth and the impact of Apple Inc AAPL changes to iOS policies are expected to be headwinds in the first quarter.

Related Link: What Does The Creator Of Term Metaverse Think Of Facebook's Name Change

Meta Platforms announced its new ticker will be META, a change from the previously reported new ticker that was set to be MVRS. The new ticker was previously used by the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF METV, which is now listed with ticker METV.

The company expects to change to ticker META in the first half of 2022.

FB Price Action: Shares are down 22% to $251.88 in after-hours trading at the time of writing.