Meta turnover increased, but Metaverse costs billions

In the previous quarter, Meta had its best turnover since 2021. This is despite the enormous investments in the Metaverse department. It cost billions and Meta warns investors that those costs will rise in the coming years.

Meta writes in a quarterly figures report that the company turned over $32 billion in the past three months. This led to a profit of $7.8 billion, a significant increase compared to the same period last year. Back then, Meta turned over $28.8 billion and earned $6.7 billion.

Meta owes its turnover mainly to higher visitor and user figures. On virtually every metric, from daily to monthly active users, Meta saw growth of between three and seven percent. The higher turnover also comes from more ad impressions. In the ‘Family of Apps’, mainly Facebook and Instagram, the number of advertisements shown increased by 34 percent, although the average revenue per advertisement decreased.

Although revenue for the regular Facebook and Instagram apps continues to grow, Meta continues to invest a lot of money in the Reality Labs division. He is concerned with metaverse developments. That department makes the software, but it also includes the R&D department for new VR headsets. Reality Labs made a loss of $3.7 billion in three months. Last year in the same period this was still $2.8 billion.

In the first half of 2023, total costs for Reality Labs rose to $7.7 billion compared to $5.7 billion a year earlier. Meta also warns investors that it will lose a lot of money on its metaverse division in the future. The company is fully committed to this, but still does not want to say when it will see concrete results or what the next steps are.