Meta Platforms
META
recently launched new features to improve its video and voice calling features in WhatsApp.
META unveiled features like 32-persons call, where users can talk with 32 people at once, four times more than the prior calling feature, in-call banner notifications and colorful waveforms.
Other important features in WhatsApp include call links, using which users can easily invite people to a group call.
The newly launched features are expected to attract users for various uses like business meetings, online classes and personal group chats. This will help improve user growth across META’s Family of Apps business and drive the top line.
Meta Platforms, Inc. Price and Consensus
Meta Platforms, Inc. price-consensus-chart
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Meta Platforms, Inc. Quote
META’s New Features to Enhance User Growth
Meta is facing the worst downturn in its operational history. Its ad revenue business is facing declining growth due to ad targeting-related headwinds created by
Apple
’s
AAPL
iOS changes.
Apple’s iOS changes have made ad targeting difficult, which has increased the cost of driving outcomes. Measuring these outcomes is tough. Meta expects these factors to hurt advertising growth in the fourth quarter of 2022.
Revenues from Family of Apps (99% of total revenues) in the third quarter of 2022, which includes Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, WhatsApp and other services, decreased 3.6% year over year to $27.43 billion. The company expects revenues to fall further in the coming quarter.
This is due to a decline in its advertisement revenues, which represents 99.3% of Family of Apps revenues. In the third quarter of 2022, advertising revenues decreased 3.7% year over year to $27.24 billion and accounted for 98.3% of third-quarter revenues. The Family of Apps is the primary source of funding for Meta’s lofty metaverse dream, upon which the company is banking its future. However, due to falling Family of Apps revenues, META’s plans to fund the growth of its Reality Labs, which is responsible for building the metaverse, have taken a major hit.
The U.S. economy is facing macroeconomic turmoil due to the rising inflation and recession triggered by interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.
Rising inflation has also compelled domestic and global customers to pull back on their purchases.
Consequently, the slowing economy is likely to trigger cuts in ad spending, which will hurt the revenues of ad-driven Internet stocks like Meta, impacting their bottom-line growth.
All these contributed to Meta’s falling share price. Its shares have tumbled 63.9% in the year-to-date period compared with the Zacks
Internet – Software
industry’s decline of 58.5%.
Amid such a situation, Meta has been investing heavily in AI and launching features across Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp to boost its user growth in its Family of Apps and increase top-line growth to meet its future goals of creating the metaverse.
Prior to the recent call development features in WhatsApp, Meta launched avatars on WhatsApp. The company used AI to create a digital version of users with various features, which creates a way of connecting with users and would be a small preview of how it would feel to communicate with others in an alternate reality of the metaverse.
META, which currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), is banking on its revenue growth in the coming quarters on solid return on investments from its investment in AI and ML and strategic partnerships.
You can see
the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here
.
However, building the metaverse is a collective effort, and as such, Meta is making strategic partnerships with PyTorch co-founder
Microsoft
MSFT
and
NVIDIA
NVDA
to develop and architect the required AI models for the metaverse.
Microsoft is bringing new work and productivity tools to Meta Quest Pro and Meta Quest 2 next year. These include apps like Microsoft Windows 365 and Microsoft Teams, and the ability to join a Teams meeting from inside Meta Horizons Workrooms, which will help create a seamless working experience in the metaverse.
Meta has collaborated with NVIDIA to build an AI research supercomputer, helping META AI researchers to build different AI models crucial for creating the metaverse.
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