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| Facebook's profits are on the rise but warns it will slow |
After the social media company warned of slowing sales growth over the next few quarters, Facebook's stock price fell 5%.
This came with the announcement of the results of the second quarter. Sales amounted to $29.08 billion. The number of daily active users has reached 1.91 billion. The number of monthly active users reached 2.9 billion.
Facebook's revenue grew 56% annually in the second quarter, the fastest growth since 2016. The company found that average ad prices rose 47% while the number of ads it served increased 6%.
Revenue from Facebook's other divisions (including consumer devices such as virtual reality glasses) was $497 million, an increase of 36%.
In the second half of this year, Facebook expects the overall annual revenue growth rate to continue to slow significantly as growth continues to accelerate.
The company said that the number of monthly users of its suite of apps reached 3.51 billion in the second quarter from 3.45 billion in the first quarter.
This metric is used to measure a company's overall user base across its main apps, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.
The company's revenue per user is higher in the United States and Canada than in other regions, and Facebook reports 195 million daily active users. It is the same as the first trimester of pregnancy. And in Europe, the number rose from 309 million in the first quarter to 307 million.
Facebook warns of economic slowdown
CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke about the company's goal of helping develop the Metaverse. He described it as a virtual environment in which you can be with people in the digital space.
The comments came two days after Facebook announced the formation of the Metaverse team.
“I expect people to move from the vision of our social media company to that of the Metaverse in the next few years,” Zuckerberg said.
Zuckerberg's view of the superuniverse requires a sense of being in a virtual world. For this reason, the company has invested heavily in the Oculus division to build the necessary hardware.
Zuckerberg said he believes Facebook can make money from the Metaverse, too. You do this by selling digital goods and experiences.
The company plans to ramp up ad targeting in 2021. This is due to regulatory and platform changes. Especially the current iOS update.
In addition, the company's CFO said, we expect the impact of iOS 14.5 to be greater in the third quarter than it was in the second quarter.