On February 3, Beijing time, the three major indexes of US stocks collectively closed up and walked out of the "four consecutive positive", with the S & P 500 index up 0.94%, the Dow index up 0.63% and the NASDAQ index up 0.5%.
From the perspective of industry concepts, Internet content and information, industrial REITs, cloud computing, semiconductors and other sectors increased, while concepts such as gene editing, quantum computing and lidar led the decline.
However, the earnings report of meta (formerly Facebook) released after hours once again cast a shadow on technology stocks.
stagnant user growth
market value evaporation exceeds 1.3 trillion
After hours on Wednesday (February 2) local time, social media and digital advertising giant Facebook, whose strategic focus has shifted to "meta universe first", announced the fourth quarter financial report of fiscal year 2021, which is also the first quarterly financial report since its parent company was renamed meta platforms in October last year.
Meta platforms earned $33.67 billion in the fourth quarter of last year, slightly higher than analysts' expectations of $33.43 billion, but EPS was $3.67, lower than the expected $3.84. Net profit of US $10.285 billion, This is also the company's first year-on-year decline in profit (- 8%) since the second quarter of 2019 . the number of live users living in the four seasons was 1.93 billion, lower than the 1.95 billion expected by analysts; The number of monthly live users was 2.91 billion, lower than the 2.95 billion expected by analysts. This also means that the company's daily living data fell month on month for the first time.
The company expects revenue in the current quarter to be between $27 billion and $29 billion, with analysts predicting $30.25 billion.
David Wehner, CFO of the company, also gave a series of growth pressures in the financial report. Wehner revealed that at present, the competition of various content platforms for consumers' use time is intensifying. Even in the company's internal product line, the stickiness of consumers tends to shift to video interfaces such as reels, but the currency conversion rate of this function is lower than that of traditional text services such as information flow.
In addition, meta also expects that the changes brought by Apple's IOS system rules and regulations will continue to have a negative impact on the targeted advertising business. At the same time, inflation and supply chain problems in the real economy will also affect the budget of advertisers. In addition, in the Fed's interest rate hike cycle, foreign exchange (the appreciation of the US dollar against other currencies) will also become a negative factor in the company's revenue growth.
As the parent company of Facebook, meta platforms Inc. User growth stalled in the fourth quarter and the disappointing outlook for the quarter raised concerns about the company's future growth prospects, the company may eventually find it difficult to justify its expensive bet on metauniverse (CEO Zuckerberg's immersive Internet vision) .
With the announcement of the financial report, meta's share price fell sharply. As of press time, meta's after hours share price fell to $250.24, down 22.89%, and its market value evaporated $208.46 billion (about 1.33 trillion yuan)
source: China stock market news
On February 3, Zuckerberg, CEO of meta, said that he planned to launch a mobile version of virtual reality experience "Horizon world" this year; The impact of IOS will continue until 2022. The company focuses on video content and attracting young people; More than 150 million users browse the business directory on WhatsApp every month. He also said that with the development of metauniverse, businesses are facing short-term challenges, and it will take time to fully realize this vision.
In addition, the meta platform analyst conference call of "meta universe company" said that artificial intelligence will play a major role in the process of building "meta universe" by the company. In view of the popularity of tiktok among consumers, the company will focus on the reels brand of instgram.
the net loss of "yuanuniverse" business exceeded US $10 billion
Apple privacy policy changes to challenge
The new financial report structure of meta consists of two parts, one is the "application family", including Facebook, instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and other services, and the other is FRL (reality labs, Facebook Reality Lab), including hardware, software and content related to AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality).
This is the first time that meta disclosed the financial data of FRL department including metauniverse strategy. The company expects that the investment in metauniverse will reduce the operating profit by about $10 billion in 2021, and FRL will not make a profit in the short term. In his vision description of metauniverse in July last year, CEO Zuckerberg hoped to build Facebook into a metauniverse company in about five years, and billions of dollars of multi-year investment will erode profits.
Reality labs, which covers AR / VR business, achieved a total revenue of US $877 million in the fourth quarter of last year, but the operating loss also reached US $3.304 billion, which clearly shows that the business is still in the money burning stage and the loss of the business has been expanding in the past year. From the performance of the whole year, Zuckerberg's "Yuan universe business" achieved a revenue of $2.27 billion and a net loss of $10.19 billion (about 64.2 billion yuan) in 2021. The business lost $4.5 billion and $6.62 billion in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
According to media reports, since meta issued the declaration of metauniverse, the term "metauniverse" has been mentioned in 224 earnings calls of American companies in 2021, compared with only 7 times in 2020, showing the high popularity of metauniverse as the next mainstream concept after mobile Internet. But Kim Forrest, chief investment officer of bokeh capital, warned that meta is expected to invest a lot of money to build metauniverse, but the pioneers cannot guarantee the success of .
Pedro palandrani, a research analyst at global x, also said that metauniverse is a "long-term story". In the short term, investors are more concerned about how meta controls Apple's privacy changes, e-commerce business breakthroughs, and ways to make profits through messenger or short video reels.
Analysts generally pointed out that although meta said it would invest billions of dollars to build a meta universe virtual world, for now, its Facebook and instagram applications and core advertising revenue, which accounts for the absolute majority of revenue, are still the focus of investors.
Meta has the world's second-largest digital advertising platform after Google. In the third quarterly report last year, the company warned that it was facing privacy changes in Apple's operating system, continuous blows to the macro economy and the epidemic and major uncertainties in the fourth quarter.
Daniel Newman, chief analyst of future research, which focuses on digital technology, pointed out that we must pay attention to the sensitivity of the advertising business to rising prices. How robust is Facebook in the high inflation environment? Can Facebook continue to raise prices if the economy slows down?
Evercore ISI analyst mark Mahaney also believes that Apple's privacy changes obviously had a negative impact on Facebook in the third quarter. The key question is whether the latter can further reduce this risk or expand the negative impact.
In addition, regulatory pressure is also a challenge meta must face. Previously, the company was ordered by UK regulators to sell giphy, a social media animation image company.
Google's market value approaches $2 trillion
popular Chinese concept stocks fell
On February 3, Beijing time, US technology rose and fell, with apple up 0.70%, Tesla down 2.75%, Amazon down 0.38%, Google a up 7.52% , Netflix down 6.05%, Microsoft up 1.52%, Qualcomm up 6.25% , amd up 5.12% and NVIDIA up 2.45%.
As the financial report released by the technology giant alphabet (Google's parent company) comprehensively exceeded expectations, and the stock split plan of up to 20 to 1 also made the company's shares easier to be held by individual investors, Google a's share price soared 7.52% to $2960 on February 3, with a market value of $1.96 trillion, close to the record high in November last year. In addition, some market participants interpreted that the cheaper share price also makes Google more likely to be included in the Dow
source: China stock market news
In addition, China concept stocks performed poorly, with well-known Internet companies such as Alibaba, jd.com, BiliBili, futu holdings and pinduoduo falling by at least 2%.
Among them, Alibaba shares closed at $122.79, down 3.48%; Jingdong shares closed at $73.21, down 2.49%; BiliBili shares closed at $33.69, down 6.13%; Pinduoduo shares closed at $57.79, down 3.04%...
source: China stock market news
