Shares of Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) soared in after-hours trading after the company reported earnings for its fourth quarter of Fiscal Year 2022. Earnings per share came in at $1.76, which missed analysts’ consensus estimate of $2.26 per share. Meta posted Facebook daily active user (DAU) numbers of 2 billion on average, up 4% against the same time last year. As for monthly active user (MAU) numbers, it posted 2.96 billion, up 2% from December 2021.
Sales decreased by 4.5% year-over-year, with revenue hitting $32.17 billion. This beat analysts’ expectations of $31.69 billion. Looking forward, management now expects revenue for Q1 2023 to be in the range of $26 billion to $28.5 billion. For reference, analysts were expecting $27.25 billion in revenue.
In addition, Meta announced a $40 billion increase to its share buyback program after revealing it had $10 billion left from its previous program. With a market cap of just under $400 billion, this equates to a buyback yield of more than 10%.
Overall, Wall Street has a consensus price target of $159.92 on META stock, implying 4.44% upside potential, as indicated by the graphic above.
