Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms has reported a 21% drop in profits for the first quarter of this year, the company’s slowest revenue growth since going public a decade ago.
According to the First Quarter 2022 Results released on Wednesday, the company’s profit was $7.5 billion as opposed to $9.5 billion during the same period last year. Income from operations plummeted by 28%. Total revenue however rose 7% to $27.9 billion.
The results follow Meta’s bleak financial report for the Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2021 released in February, when the company also posted an 8% drop in profits and slowing user growth. The figures led to Meta’s stock plummeting more than 20% and its market value plunging more than $230 billion in the company’s biggest-ever one-day crash.
The losses in the two quarters are the company’s first back-to-back profit declines in over a decade, with a growth rate now below levels seen since it went public in 2012.
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg remained upbeat, however, saying that “We made progress this quarter across a number of key company priorities and we remain confident in the long-term opportunities and growth that our product roadmap will unlock.”
The social media network reported a slight increase in the number of active users logging on daily and monthly, which helped prop up the revenue, with Zuckerberg saying that he was “proud of how our products are serving people around the world.”
READ MORE: Meta unveils fees on metaverse salesThe company recently changed course and bet on virtual reality with the launch of the Metaverse, an online video game that allows people to build and explore virtual worlds. Meta started spending heavily on related products like virtual-reality goggles. However, augmented reality hasn’t demonstrated solid returns yet. Earlier this month Meta Platforms announced it would charge metaverse creators around 47.5% on sales of digital assets and experiences made inside the firm’s virtual reality platform Horizon Worlds.
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