Meta Reports Strong Earnings, Stock Jumps ~25 Percent

CNBC:

Meta shares popped in extended trading on Wednesday after the company reported fourth-quarter revenue that topped estimates and announced a $40 billion stock buyback. Here are the results. [...]

  • Daily Active Users (DAUs): 2 billion vs 1.99 billion expected
  • Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 2.96 billion vs 2.98 billion expected
  • Average Revenue per User (ARPU): $10.86 vs $10.63 expected

Sure seems like it’s time for Zuckerberg to drop his whining about App Tracking Transparency. They still have an almost unimaginably massive audience — 2 billion users per day! — so surely there are ways to monetize that attention that don’t require cross-app tracking.

That ARPU extrapolates to about $45/year. Would you pay, say, $50/year to get an ad-free experience on Facebook’s products? A year or two ago I’d have said yes, just for Instagram. (My Instagram use has decreased significantly since then.) I realize they’re not going to offer that, but “average revenue per user” is an interesting metric.

See also: “The Inverse Cramer ETF remains undefeated.”

★ Thursday, 2 February 2023